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Function call evaluation order varies more than manual allows #6136

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vicuna opened this issue Aug 22, 2013 · 2 comments
Closed

Function call evaluation order varies more than manual allows #6136

vicuna opened this issue Aug 22, 2013 · 2 comments

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@vicuna
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vicuna commented Aug 22, 2013

Original bug ID: 6136
Reporter: @yallop
Status: closed (set by @mshinwell on 2016-12-13T10:45:30Z)
Resolution: duplicate
Priority: normal
Severity: minor
Target version: 4.03.1+dev
Category: documentation
Related to: #7346
Monitored by: @ygrek @hcarty @xavierleroy

Bug description

The manual says that OCaml application is multi-argument

The expression expr argument1 … argumentn evaluates the expression expr and
those appearing in argument1 to argumentn.

and that the order of evaluation of the arguments and the function is
unspecified:

The order in which the expressions expr, argument1, …, argumentn are
evaluated is not specified.

However, the time of the actual call is specified: it takes place after the
function expression and all the argument expressions have been evaluated:

The expression expr must evaluate to a functional value f, which is then
applied to the values of argument1, …, argumentn.

In practice, there's more variation in the behaviour; it shows up when a
function performs an effect after receiving arguments. Here's an example
showing the different behaviour between ocamlc and ocamlopt, and with known
and unknown functions:

First, the example. (The function syntactically takes two arguments, but its
type 'a -> 'b -> 'a allows more.)

$ cat call.ml
let f g x = ignore (failwith "called f"); g

let g x = x

let h = f g 2 (failwith "third argument")

With ocamlc the function is never called, since the evaluation of the third
argument raises an exception:

$ ocamlc call.ml -o call && ./call
Fatal error: exception Failure("third argument")

With ocamlopt the function is called before receiving all three arguments, so
the third argument is never evaluated:

$ ocamlopt call.ml -o call && ./call
Fatal error: exception Failure("called f")

Here's a variation of the example where f is no longer statically visible:

$ cat call2.ml
let f g x = ignore (failwith "called f"); g

let g x = x

let h f =
f g 2 (failwith "third argument")

let _ = h f

Now ocamlopt evaluates all three arguments before calling the function:

$ ocamlopt call2.ml -o call2 && ./call2
Fatal error: exception Failure("third argument")

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Aug 22, 2013

Comment author: @damiendoligez

Simplifying the examples a little bit:

let pr x = Printf.printf "%s\n%!" x;;
let f = fun x -> ignore (pr "f"); fun y -> ();;
f (pr "1") (pr "2");;

With ocamlc, we get the expected "2 1 f"; with ocamlopt, we get "1 f 2".

@vicuna
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vicuna commented Dec 13, 2016

Comment author: @mshinwell

Superceded by #967

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