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 OAA21683; Tue, 3 Apr 2001 14:59:08 +0200 (MET DST) 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 OAA21669 for ; Tue, 3 Apr 2001 14:59:07 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from ext.lri.fr (ext.lri.fr [129.175.15.4]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f33Cx7P08884 for ; Tue, 3 Apr 2001 14:59:07 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from pc803.lri.fr (IDENT:root@pc803 [129.175.8.114]) by ext.lri.fr (8.11.1/jtpda-5.3.2) with ESMTP id f33Cx5u20208 ; Tue, 3 Apr 2001 14:59:05 +0200 (MET DST) Received: by pc803.lri.fr (8.9.3/feuille) id OAA09149 ; Tue, 3 Apr 2001 14:59:06 +0200 X-Authentication-Warning: localhost.localdomain: filliatr set sender to filliatr@pc803 using -f From: Jean-Christophe Filliatre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15049.51482.197252.672850@pc803> Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2001 14:59:06 +0200 (MEST) To: Jacques Garrigue Cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Future of labels, and ideas for library labelling In-Reply-To: <20010403185448J.garrigue@kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp> References: <20010403125314Q.garrigue@kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp> <20010403105212.A15700@pauillac.inria.fr> <20010403185448J.garrigue@kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp> X-Mailer: VM 6.49 under Emacs 20.4.1 Reply-To: Jean-Christophe.Filliatre@lri.fr (Jean-Christophe Filliatre) Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk Jacques Garrigue writes: > Unfortunately, I see not very much enthusiasm for the classic mode. First, let me say that probably most users of the classic mode are not even aware of what labels are, are not reading this thread or are reading it but without participating. I was one of the latter (and to be more precise, we are many in that case in the team where I work). But you want enthusiasm, I'll give you some. I've written dozens of thousands lines of Caml code, and I'm currently maintaining more than one hundred thousands lines. And I'm perfectly happy with the classic mode. I recognize that labels may be helpful, even necessary in some particular situations, but I don't need them *at all* and I wouldn't like to be forced to switch to a compulsory label-mode, nor to have to explain to the students the meaning of this constraint. You invoke several arguments, in particular documentation and static checking of the code. As far as documentation is concerned, the classic mode is enough for that purpose. Personally, I use a literate programming tool to document my programs (roughly in the way the ocaml standard library is documented) and I don't use labels at all for a documentation purpose. As far as static checking is concerned, I agree that one can misapply a function, confusing for instance the accumulator and the value on which to iterate. But your arguments are not convincing at all: your version of the function building a set from a list of lists was, from my point of view, really uglier than the initial one line version and more difficult for me to read and to understand (in particular, because I'm familiar with List.fold_left and List.fold_right, but that's rather normal to be familiar to one's favorite language standard library). You see, that's a question of programming style. So why will a few users of labels impose their programming style to a majority? To summarize, I really think you're underestimating the number of users happy with the classic mode and who would not like to go for a compulsory label-mode. They are probably not reading that (too extremist) discussion anymore, actually. Best regards, -- Jean-Christophe FILLIATRE mailto:Jean-Christophe.Filliatre@lri.fr http://www.lri.fr/~filliatr ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr. Archives: http://caml.inria.fr