Oh, thank you for clarification. I'm very new to functional
programming, and didn't know yet about tricks like this. As
I understand, the point was to call 'ref' at initialization
stage. I thought about using 'lazy' for that, but still
placed it inside a full function definition, so it didn't
help.

This makes a possibility to write very funny
functions. For example:

# let acc v =
    let vR = ref v in
    fun f -> 
            let newV = f !vR in
          vR := newV;
          newV  ;;
val acc : 'a -> ('a -> 'a) -> 'a = <fun>
# let f1 = acc 12;;
val f1 : (int -> int) -> int = <fun>
# f1 ((+) 1);;
- : int = 13
# f1 ((+) 1);;
- : int = 14
# f1 ((+) 1);;
- : int = 15
# f1 ((+) 1);;
- : int = 16
# f1 ((+) 1);;
- : int = 17
# let f2 = acc "hello";;
val f2 : (string -> string) -> string = <fun>
# f2 ((^) " a");;       
- : string = " ahello"
# f2 ((^) " b");;
- : string = " b ahello"
# f2 ((^) " c");;
- : string = " c b ahello"

I'm not sure if this style of coding better than placing the
mutable values to be hidden inside modules or classes. Even
when possible (in other languages), I prefer to use
latter way to do. Well it's a matter of taste.

Max.

On Sat, Jun 15, 2002 at 02:36:03AM -0400, John Prevost wrote:
>>>>>> "mk" == Max Kirillov <max630@mail.ru> writes:
> 
>mk> Hello.  The code you write will generate a new (empty) ref at
>mk> every call.
> 
> Actually, it won't.  Take a look at the code that was sent by Yutaka OIWA:
> 
> let get_chunk =
>   let chunks_list = ref [] in
>   fun () ->
>     ...
> 
> The ref is bound outside of the function definition, so it's created
> once and kept in the closure, not allocated in each call. 
<...>
> Your version also works, but creates a module-level binding for the
> value as well, which isn't desirable for something like this, where
> you want the value to be local to the function definition.
> 
> John.
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