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[Caml-list] Breaking out of iterative loops
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Date: | 2002-05-02 (08:33) |
From: | Markus Mottl <markus@o...> |
Subject: | Re: [Caml-list] Breaking out of iterative loops |
On Wed, 01 May 2002, John Prevost wrote: > The drawback to allowing: > > let rec ones = 1 :: ones > > and such expressions is that when looking at the definition of, for > example, 'a list and length, one would expect it to be guaranteed that > length terminates. Since you can't prevent recursive use of > constructors, well, you can no longer guarantee that. I second this. Does anybody here really benefit from such cyclic structures? I haven't found a single practical case where this was useful, but would assume that some future program transformation tools that use proofs by induction would have an easier life if this were disallowed... Regards, Markus Mottl -- Markus Mottl markus@oefai.at Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.oefai.at/~markus ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners