On Fri, 27 Dec 2002, Pierre Weis wrote:
> > Can marshalling functions output be different for different versions of
> > Ocaml? If I try to feed incompatible data (e.g. form the previous version)
> > to input_value, what I will have then - segfault? If so, they can hardly be
> > used for saving configuration data.
> > 
> > - Dmitry Bely
> 
> There is is no warranty from the language definition, nor from the
> implementor team, that the marshalling functions will never be
> modified: imagine we find a new way to get data files much more
> compact, then yes, sure, we will implement this new scheme as soon as
> possible!

One can also write IO routines which tag the file with a header string 
containing Sys.ocaml_version, and raise an exception if that header is 
incompatible with the version of OCaml you're using. That avoids the 
crash. 

Wishing for type safe value IO in OCaml for 2003!

-- Brian


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