On 1/13/07, Edgar Friendly <thelema314@gmail.com> wrote:
> I understand that the let statement groups the following compound
> expression into one statement for the then-clause, so it's a precedence
> problem.  Would it really be enough to raise the precedence of ; higher
> than that of if/then?  Is there any reason this hasn't been done already?

It may be useful to note that some people might want to write code like:

foo ;
x <- if y then a else b ;
bar ;

In that example bar is really meant to be outside the if-then-else.

OCaml has no such thing as statements, but only expressions. But let
me use these words: you want a statement-level if-then-else with lower
precedence than ";", it cannot be the same as this expression-level
if-then-else with higher precedence than ";". If you're bored with
begin/end a good solution might be to define a new construct using
camlp4 instead of hacking the compiler. It's the good advice in
general for syntax problems.

my_if condition my_then
  foo ;
  x <- if y then a else b ;
  bar ;
my_else
  etc

Of course one wants better keywords than this. Finally, I'd made the
closing of that new if mandatory, it seems clearer.

Hope that helps.
-- 
David