Re: When functional languages can be accepted by industry?

[Gerd Stolpmann <Gerd.Stolpmann@darmstadt.netsurf.de>]

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

There was never a reply from the Caml team.

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