On Tue, 2007-04-03 at 23:52 -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > The question is: if this behavior was completely outlawed, and either you
> > couldn't build up circular lists/recursive data structures of this type at
> > all, or had to call special functions (List.circularize, say), to create
> > them, would this be a signifigant problem?  Does anyone actually use this
> > construct, and if so, for what?
> 
> This is the case in SML: you need to go through a `ref' cell in order to
> create a cycle.  This has very rarely been presented as
> a serious limitation.  OCaml's trick is occasionally useful, but I don't
> think anybody would lose her sleep over it.

You can also create cycles using functional abstraction (otherwise
a pure FPL wouldn't need a garbage collector, ref counting would
suffice).

-- 
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net>
Felix, successor to C++: http://felix.sf.net