Comment author: administrator

when I try to use ocamlc like this:
bash# ocamlc -c foo.mli

on this file:
<foo.mli>
val bar: Faux.garbage

I get the following error, as expected:
File "foo.mli", line 1, characters 9-21:
Unbound type constructor Faux.garbage

But if I change Faux to Aux, like so:
<foo.mli>
val bar: Aux.garbage

Then ocamlc starts eating resources very quickly, and locks
up my computer.

Believe it or not, but for backward compatibility with MSDOS, Windows
treat the "aux" filename specially: it is interpreted as a reference
to one of the serial ports (I think). Worse, Windows just ignores the
filename extension, so that aux. is also a reference to the
serial port.

Now, when ocamlc type-checks an access to a component of
another compilation unit, such as Aux.garbage, it reads some type
information from the file aux.cmi. Under Windows, it therefore tries
to read from the serial port, with the consequences you observed.

There is nothing Caml-specific in this problem; other programs suffer
equally under the same circumstances.

Two alternatives: either be very careful with file names ("aux" isn't
the only special name, there's also "con", "prn", "com1", "com2" and a
few others I forgot), or use a real operating system.

• Xavier Leroy