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[Caml-list] Breaking out of iterative loops

Vincent Foley
- Johan Baltié
  - John Max Skaller
    - John Prevost
      - Markus Mottl
        
        Francois Pottier
        
        Alain Frisch
        
        Alessandro Baretta
        
        John Max Skaller

Date:	-- (:)
From:	Francois Pottier <francois.pottier@i...>
Subject:	Re: [Caml-list] Breaking out of iterative loops

On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 10:33:35AM +0200, Markus Mottl wrote:
> 
> I second this. Does anybody here really benefit from such cyclic
> structures?

Yes, they can be useful, at least when they are mutable. Sometimes
a pointer to a known node (i.e. a cyclic pointer) can be used instead
of None. This can save the use of an option type, for instance.
Anyway, in the presence of mutable fields, you can't prevent cyclic
structures from appearing, so there is no point in disallowing their
explicit definition.

The situation is different in the case of immutable structures. I
don't know of any situation where immutable, cyclic structures are
useful.

-- 
François Pottier
Francois.Pottier@inria.fr
http://pauillac.inria.fr/~fpottier/
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