Sorry for the delay on the response- I'm way behind on my email...

On Wed, 28 Apr 2004, Jon Harrop wrote:

> On Wednesday 28 April 2004 5:31 am, Brian Hurt wrote:
> > It's been too long since I've used the STL- what data structures and
> > algorithms does it provide?
> 
> The main thing is that it is iterator-centric, so you pass iterators around 
> instead of containers. 

Just for the record, you *can* do this just fine in Ocaml.  Ext-lib is 
already doing this.  This isn't a limitation of the language, it's a 
feature lack of the core library.

> These iterators are classified according to their abilities (e.g. 
> trivial, forward, random-access etc.). 

I don't think having lots of different types of iterators is all that 
usefull.  Once you get beyond a simple linear walk through the data 
structure, the nature of the data structure becomes important.

> I'm not saying that these things can't be done in ocaml, just that you
> can do them easily in C++ using the STL. I'd be very interested to hear
> ocaml equivalents though! If you want to know more about the STL then I
> suggest you refer back to Stepanov's ramblings, rather than looking at
> the "standard"  which was, unfortunately, bastardised by a committee...

Much of what you listed is either a) already implemented in the standard
library, or b) implemented in Ext-Lib.  The only stuff I noticed which we
lacked were the numerical stuff- 2D matricies/numerical algorithms and
complex numbers.  As you note, complex really needs to be a builtin.  And, 
IMHO, numerical algos really need to be a whole library by themselves- see 
LAPACK as an example.

--
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive,
difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of
mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it."
                                - Gene Spafford 
Brian


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