On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 20:22:57 +0100, Alex Baretta <alex@barettadeit.com> wrote:
> Currently ocaml does not support empty polymorphic variant sum types.
> Say, I cannot write the following.
> 
> type empty = [ ]
> 
> This fails due to a syntax error rather than a typing error, which is a
> sensible, given that the type expression I have written is actually
> perfectly meaningful.

I'm somewhat confused as to why this is different from simply
declaring a new opaque type:

type empty

Since there is no way to construct a value of the type, nor any way to
deconstruct such a value, how is it different?

John.