]> From: henridf@lcavsun1.epfl.ch > i had a minor bug where the last expression in a > let _ = ... > block of my module was not fully applied and hence was returning a > functional value rather than apply the function (because I had added a > parameter to the function). > > pretty harmless, but it led me to wonder why I wasn't writing 'let () = > ..' for all my module initialization blocks, which would have given me > 'warning should have type unit' in the above situation. > > So is there a reason why the commonly used idiom seems to be 'let _ =' > rather than 'let () = '? I suppose this is the 1 character difference :-) Programmers are lazy. I've been advocating using "let () =" for a while now, and I am of course using it myself. By the way, there is a reason "let _ =" produces no warning: this is the only way to do a partial application without warning. "expr; ..." and even "ignore (expr); ..." will produce a warning. By the way, I'm always disabling the s warning ("should be unit"), to avoid being tempted by using "let _ = expr in " when I want to ignore the result of a fully applied expression which does not return unit. I know ignore does it, but I'm lazy too. Jacques ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners