Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 13:47:10 +0300 (MSK)
From: Anton Moscal <msk@post.tepkom.ru>
To: Pierre Weis <Pierre.Weis@inria.fr>
Subject: Re: Array interface question
In-Reply-To: <199901221921.UAA10085@pauillac.inria.fr>
On Fri, 22 Jan 1999, Pierre Weis wrote:
> > Why is there no creation function which does not take a default
> > value for filling the array?
> [...]
> >
> > -- Brian
>
> This is due to the coexistance in Caml of polymorphism and mutable
> values. The system would be unsafe if we were able to allocate
> polymorphic mutable values (those mutable values could be filled
> afterwards with values of unrelated types, and hence would break the
> homogeneous sequence nature of arrays, and then may be read back with
> types unrelated to their proper types).
Other reason for immediate arrays initialization is garbage collection, I
think.
Anton
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