Re: When functional languages can be accepted by industry?

From: Gerd Stolpmann (Gerd.Stolpmann@darmstadt.netsurf.de)
Date: Sat Apr 22 2000 - 20:30:39 MET DST

  • Next message: John Max Skaller: "Re: When functional languages can be accepted by industry?"

    On Fri, 21 Apr 2000, John Max Skaller wrote:

    >Perhaps the first, and simplest step, is to augment the notion
    >of 'path' from a list of directories to search for a module A,
    >to the notion that we can navigate the file system _tree_ looking
    >for 'nested' module name such as D1.D2.B.

    The problem is that the pseudo modules D1 and D1.D2 do not have
    signatures (or better: they do not have a fixed signature)
    because you can always put another module into the directory.

    Would you allow then something like

    module M = D1 ?

    What is the signature of M? - M can occur in another signature,
    making things complicated.

    >What I envisage is that 'opening' a module which turns out to
    >be a directory is some special file, plus the modules in
    >that directory. These 'nested' modules are written 'as if nested
    >in their parent'.
    >
    >In other words, this compilation model is a 'lexical convention'
    >for writing
    >
    > (* module top *)
    > (* .. code for top .. *)
    > module submod1 = ..
    > module submod2 = ...
    >
    >Just as there is a convention that a 'plain' *.ml file is a top
    >level module, a directory represents a special module whose primary
    >function is namespace control.
    >
    >This requires a change to the compiler I think. It is not a total
    >package control mechanism, but it alleviates the namespace
    >pollution problem, and makes the files of a package easier to install
    >using a directory tree (perhaps using symbolic links ..).

    See also the thread "Module hierarchy revisited" (December 1999):

    http://caml.inria.fr/pub/old_caml_site/caml-list/2071.html
    http://caml.inria.fr/pub/old_caml_site/caml-list/2082.html
    http://caml.inria.fr/pub/old_caml_site/caml-list/2091.html
    http://caml.inria.fr/pub/old_caml_site/caml-list/2093.html

    There was never a reply from the Caml team.

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