On Mon, 15 May 2000, Max Skaller wrote:

> Hongwei Xi wrote:
> 
> > Certainly, we can replace ? with 0. But what is really achieved?
> > I would say it is simply an illusion that a program is made safer
> > by initializing each array upon its allocation. 
> 
> What's happening here is this: ocaml is basically a _functional_
> programming language. In such a language there is no such thing
> as a variable, _everything_ is a constant. In this view,
> the notion that there can be an uninitialised variable
> is absurd, since there are no variables!

It is not absurd. You may think an uninitialized value having
type (exists alpha.alpha), or type 'top' by making every type a
subtype of 'top'.

--Hongwei