David McClain wrote:
>
> I have a perfectly good running VM as user process library
> running right now
> in C++ that allows for mixed array files, arbitrary offsets
> into the file
> for various array pointers, and this is all transparent to
> the user just as I indicated in my wish list for OCaml.

But it doesn't do scatter-gather DMA.  A user process only grants so
much control, and you seem to want an awful lot of control.  Hence my
suggestion that you tweak an OS.

> In more than 20 years of scientific data access and analysis
> I have only
> seen uniform arrays, one per file, generated by neophytes. In
> just about
> every case I can remember; NetCDF, HDF, FITS, RIF Wave Files,
> MPEG, etc., these are all compound object files.

Us neophytes call them 'file formats'.  They aren't arrays.  I think
we'll be at loggerheads until we agree what an 'array' is.

> The trouble with the simple minded
> approach of one array per file is that most data acquisitions
> will then end
> up with dozens of component data files and it becomes a
> tracking nightmare
> to keep them all coordinated. Not so if you permit compound
> document files.

What does this have to do with Bigarray?  Bigarray provides uniform
basic types in unboxed consecutive memory locations, ala C or Fortran.
That's the entire point, to communicate with arrays as C and Fortran do
them.  Why are you expecting it to be something exceedingly different?

> With a language as rich and wonderful as OCaml, I really
> can't understand your hostility

I haven't spoken with hostility.  I gather you're somewhat attached to
your problems, to view my comments as hostility.

> to useful additions to the language.

Clearly, you think your ideas are useful to you.  Whether others think
they're useful to them, remains to be seen.

> If you don't want to
> play, you don't have to join my sandbox -- find another.

You've lost me here.  Are you saying that if you hear feedback you don't
like, that those giving the feedback should leave caml-list or just be
quiet?


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brand*n Van Every               S*attle, WA

Praise Be to the caml-list Bayesian filter! It blesseth
my postings, it is evil crap!  evil crap!  Bigarray!
Unboxed overhead group!  Wondering!  chant chant chant...


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