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 FAA23175; Tue, 23 Dec 2003 05:00:52 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id FAA13907 for ; Tue, 23 Dec 2003 05:00:51 +0100 (MET) Received: from out2.smtp.messagingengine.com (out2.smtp.messagingengine.com [66.111.4.26]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id hBN40nv07564 for ; Tue, 23 Dec 2003 05:00:50 +0100 (MET) X-Sasl-enc: phX46eq7Xgn8bZIIRZKGng 1072152042 Received: from [192.168.1.100] (user224.net229.nc.sprint-hsd.net [65.173.93.224]) by mail.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 01ECB4887E5 for ; Mon, 22 Dec 2003 23:00:42 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Caml-list] Frustrated Beginner From: Tyler Eaves To: caml-list@inria.fr Content-Type: text/plain Message-Id: <1072152186.59938.30.camel@tylere> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.5 Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 23:03:07 -0500 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; python:01 langauges:01 postion:99 compiler:01 command:98 syntax:02 syntax:02 compile:02 native:02 o'caml:02 o'caml:02 recursive:03 perl:03 completly:03 arguments:03 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk First a bit of background: I'm a 19 yr old computer science student, been programming for perhaps 10 years. Started (Like so many did in the early '90s with QBasic in DOS. These days most of my work is done in either PHP (web stuff) or Python (everything else) with the occasional bit of C for stuff that needs to run really fast. I'm also passingly familiar with a number of other langauges (C++, Java, Perl, etc). So why is O'Caml giving me so much trouble? I've been trying to pick it up for about a week now, read various online tutorials. I'm just having no luck at all. My largest program to date (that works) is all of 3 lines long, and simply printed out the command line arguments passed to the program. My biggest source of problems seems to be the syntax. I'm totally confused as far as ; vs ;; vs nothing, when to use ( ), and things of the like. It doesn't help that the compiler is completly naive when it comes to Syntax Errors. It would be so helpful if it could give an error message that actually told the programmer what it expected. I realise that O'Camls syntax allows many things, so that it may be hard to say exactly what it WAS expecting in all cases, but surely SOMETHING meaningful, besides a charater postion could be given? What I'd really like is a site with examples of actual programs. Most of the example code I've seen is A: Not commened and B: Recursive Mathematical functions. I'd really love to see an example, of say, reading in a file, looking at each character, and doing something when it encounters, say, a tab. Or any other such program that actually does something. I really want to like O'Caml. It seems to offer a very nice feature set, and the ability to compile to super-fast native code is the icing on the cake. Right now though, I'm frustrated and on the verge of giving up. TE ------------------- 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