Sort module musings

Sort module musings

[James Hague]

Does anyone else find that the Sort module to be in logical conflict with
the Array and List modules?  Both the Array and List modules contain
"map", "fold_left", and "fold_right", but there isn't a separate Map
module (for example, you use List.map instead of Map.list).

Following this pattern, Sort.list should be List.sort and Sort.array
should be Array.sort. 

I expect that this has come up before, and there is a good justification
for the Sort module, but I thought I would mention it from a new OCaml
user's perspective just in case. 

James Hague

Re: Sort module musings

[Xavier Leroy]

> Following this pattern, Sort.list should be List.sort and Sort.array
> should be Array.sort. 
> I expect that this has come up before, and there is a good justification
> for the Sort module

You're right, this naming is not consistent with the remainder of the
library.  I can't remember any good justification for it.

- Xavier Leroy

Sys.command in Windows NT

[Stephanie Weirich]

Help!

I'm unable to execute Sys.command under Windows NT.
I get the error message:
/c: Permission denied
and a return value of 1.

I'm sure that something is not configured correctly, but I'm not sure 
where to look. 

Thanks, 
Stephanie

Re: Sys.command in Windows NT

[Xavier Leroy]

> I'm unable to execute Sys.command under Windows NT.
> I get the error message:
> /c: Permission denied
> and a return value of 1.
> I'm sure that something is not configured correctly, but I'm not sure 
> where to look. 

First, check the environment variables COMSPEC and PATH in your
environment, because that's where the C library function system()
(which implements Sys.command) looks for the Windows command
interpreter.  On my installation of NT, for instance, I have
COMSPEC set to C:\winnt\system32\cmd.exe, which is NT's command interpreter.
If COMSPEC is unset, I think system() searches in PATH for cmd.exe or
command.exe.

If the environment variables look OK, but the command line given to
Sys.command is longer than 1000 characters, try first with shorter
commands.  Long command lines are treated specially by the OCaml
runtime, and there might be a problem there.

If that doesn't help, I don't know how to proceed.  As far as I know,
there is no Windows tool that would trace the system calls performed
by OCaml, so that we know exactly what is happening.

- Xavier Leroy