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On Tuesday 03 March 2009 06:36:52 pm Jon Harrop wrote:
> On Tuesday 03 March 2009 22:31:55 Yoann Padioleau wrote:
> > Also, a maybe good thing with STL is that you can write a single 'find'
> > or 'sort' function that will work for every kind of collections
> > (list, arrays, map, hash, etc) by using the
> > indirect iterator idiom, without the penalty of dynamic dispatch
> > solutions. I am not sure OCaml can do that too.
>
> OCaml can do that too. Just wrap your code in a functor and parameterize it
> over the module implementing the data structure (e.g. List or Array).
> Modules and functors are second-class statically resolved constructs in
> OCaml so there is no dynamic dispatch.

As usual I want to point out the alternative: objects.  Eg. you can write a 
function that takes any object with the "find" method and look for 
<whatever>.  Objects in contrast to functors are dynamically dispatched so 
they are more flexible but just a little slower (method calls are cached).  
It also lets you make calls to find without being explict.  Eg. instead of 
List.find or Array.find or Set.Make(String).find, you can just do #find.

Peng
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