Working with non-shared data structures in OCaml
Deep copy of OCaml structures, marshaling
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Dear group members,

I need to process arrays of pairs of integers and
records ((int * record) array) in which all elements
must be updated individually, which means that
unshared data structures must be used. For arrays of
arrays I can produce unshared data by using the
library functions Array.copy and Array.append to
append the individual arrays into the embedding array.
It works, the low level arrays can be updated
individually. But I cannot use the same scheme to the
array of the (int * record) structures, because I do
not know how to copy these structures to dissolve the
sharing. I do not even know how to copy records. It
seems to me that this problem occurs always when I
want to produce an array of data with a fixed
structure automatically (rather than entering the
array [| ... |] by hand at the top level interpreter
using constants only). How can I produce completely
unshared structures?

What about marshaling and unmarshaling the data? This
should produce a deep copy of data objects. I have
tried it, it works, but it seems to me wasteful to
copy all the data twice only to get rid of the
sharing.

It would be great to know of a completely general (any
nested structures) and fast solution (without copying)
how to produce unshared data structures.

My environment is OCaml 3.08.02 for Windows on Win
2000, New Windows Interface v1.9RC4.

I am looking forward to you reply.

Regards,

Martin

Martin Chabr
Hochstrasse 28
8044 Zürich
Schweiz / Switzerland
Tel.P.: 01-261 17 24


		
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