On Tuesday 05 February 2008 08:21:21 Damien Guichard wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> Typically, when you declare:
>
> type card =
>
>   | Card of int
>   | Jack
>   | Queen
>   | King
>   | Ace
>
>   ;;
>
> The relation you wish is:
>
> Card(2) < ...< Card(10) < Jack < Queen < King < Ace
>
> And that's what you get when using F#.

Comparison is OCaml's achilles heel and this is one (minor) manifestation of 
that. The ability to develop a program and break a use of polymorphic 
comparison buried within it without knowing is far more serious and has 
caused many people untold grief in the past.

SML's equality types are a slight improvement but F# and Haskell's solutions 
are the best way forward AFAICT. OCaml will never be fixed in this sense but, 
hopefully, a next-generation FPL implementation will solve these problems 
without sacrificing OCaml's other benefits.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e