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 UAA05924; Thu, 23 Aug 2001 20:05:43 +0200 (MET DST) 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 UAA05805 for ; Thu, 23 Aug 2001 20:05:42 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from www.invert.com (invert.com [209.164.21.15]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f7NI5eX03602 for ; Thu, 23 Aug 2001 20:05:41 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (from miles@localhost) by www.invert.com (8.10.1/8.10.1AA) id f7NI5P406290; Thu, 23 Aug 2001 11:05:25 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from miles) Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 11:05:25 -0700 From: Miles Egan To: Alain Frisch Cc: Caml list Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Libraries in the distribution Message-ID: <20010823110525.A5828@caddr.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from frisch@clipper.ens.fr on Thu, Aug 23, 2001 at 07:37:49PM +0200 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk On Thu, Aug 23, 2001 at 07:37:49PM +0200, Alain Frisch wrote: > there seems to be a consensus that the Str library should be replaced with > Pcre in the standard distribution. I guess that nobody is satisfied with > Str, and that it is kept in the distribution for backward compatibility. I'd prefer that both str and pcre are included, for backward compatibility. > I don't want to speak for the Caml team, but I'm not sure to see how a 3rd > party library could be included in the standard distribution. The OCaml > distribution follows OCaml releases (of course !), and the author of the > library may want to release more often. Recall that OCaml development does > not follow the bazar model (?); including 3rd party packages is not the > best way to keep control of the development of the language. I agree that third party libraries are problematic, and I think it's wise to keep their number to a minimum. In the specific case of pcre, I don't think it would be too difficult to just include it and update it occasionally as necessary. I think Python did this and it didn't cause too much grief. > I think it is best to keep the OCaml distribution as small as possible, > and to facilitate the installation of other packages. I agree, but I also think a good regex package is essential and should be standard. OCaml seems to be gaining momentum and I think a good, standard regex package could be a significant boost. The PLEAC project is a good example of the importance of such a package. I'd like to help with the perl -> ocaml translations, but I think it would be a waste of time to write code using the str module and I'm also hesitant to use a third party library in "cookbook" examples. Speaking just as an OCaml user, I'm much more concerned with the interface of the package than the implementation. Perhaps there could be a "re" module, for example, implemented now with pcre and later in pure OCaml? -- miles "We in the past evade X, where X is something which we believe to be a lion, through the act of running." - swiftrain@geocities.com ------------------- Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr