From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id PAA31918; Mon, 3 Nov 2003 15:20:12 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id PAA31897 for ; Mon, 3 Nov 2003 15:20:10 +0100 (MET) Received: from smtp.siren.ocn.ne.jp (siren.ocn.ne.jp [211.129.13.170]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id hA3EK8109341; Mon, 3 Nov 2003 15:20:09 +0100 (MET) Received: from PWARP (p3229-ipad05kyoto.kyoto.ocn.ne.jp [220.105.40.229]) by smtp.siren.ocn.ne.jp (Postfix) with SMTP id 06E751CE7; Mon, 3 Nov 2003 23:20:06 +0900 (JST) Message-ID: <006901c3a215$93641ad0$6f00a8c0@PWARP> From: "Nicolas Cannasse" To: "Damien Doligez" , References: <6F818717-0E06-11D8-B422-00039310CAE8@inria.fr> Subject: Re: [Caml-list] undocumented external ... = "%identity" Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 23:20:04 +0900 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; cannasse:01 warplayer:01 caml-list:01 undocumented:01 runtime:01 librairies:01 cannasse:01 compiler:01 ocaml:01 ocaml:01 caml:01 nicolas:01 nicolas:01 interfaces:01 underlying:01 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk [...] > ... or a change in the data representations used by the compiler and > runtime. > > > Such major changes are usually backward compatibile, if not I suppose > > the Obj.magic forward porting problem will be the minor problem > > programmer will have with a new ocaml release ... > > Not true. We can make changes that break many uses of Obj.magic without > changing the language or the type system. That's why Obj.magic is not > documented. To be 100% honest, you should say that such a change would break most of the Ocaml interfaces to C librairies, and that such a change have is then highly unexpectable (at least I hope so for the sake of Ocaml). Documenting Obj.magic would have the benefit to make people better understand the underlying C representation of caml values, and then writing more efficient code - and start writing more C libraries.... Nicolas Cannasse ------------------- 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