Re: [Caml-list] Operator for Lazy.force?

[Dario Teixeira <darioteixeira@yahoo.com>]

Hi,

> So theirs ( !! ) operator will override Pervasives' one.
> What's the problem?  Anyway projects you've mentioned don't use
> Lazy, so there's no chance of "operator clash".

I don't think it's that simple.  Once (!!) is "standardised" to be Lazy.force,
people encountering it when reading third-party code will expect it to have
that function, and are less likely to carefully read the third-party code to
see if it has been redefined. This is not the case right now: though (!!)
is often defined as Lazy.force, this is by no means universal, so one
still has to check.

With the above in mind, standardising (!!) to be Lazy.force will in effect
make it a bad practice to redefine it, as is the case for the other standard
operators.  Note that the only commonly redefined operators are the
arithmetic ones, and even those tend to be redefined only when there's
little chance of shadowing (cf. Batteries Float module).

All and all, standardising (!!) to be Lazy.force would result in many projects
having to use (!!!) instead, reserving the more convenient (!!) to the small
number of projects that make heavy use of Lazy.force.

Best regards,
Dario Teixeira