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 UAA16709; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 20:05:21 +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 UAA16645 for ; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 20:05:20 +0100 (MET) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [204.156.12.50]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id fBCJ5Eb02130; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 20:05:14 +0100 (MET) Received: from localhost (patrick@localhost) by fledge.watson.org (8.11.6/8.11.5) with ESMTP id fBCJ4vv51163; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 14:04:57 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from patrick@watson.org) Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 14:04:56 -0500 (EST) From: Patrick M Doane To: Chris Hecker cc: Francois.Pottier@inria.fr, Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Function call with a list of parameters In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20011212103956.00e4ced0@arda.pair.com> Message-ID: <20011212140001.R47912-100000@fledge.watson.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, Chris Hecker wrote: > > It does seem like there's an asymmetry in parameters versus return > values that might be worth looking into (in languages in general, not > just caml). Bruce's example was interesting to me because I didn't > know that lisp had tuples (as opposed to just lists). That > reintroduces the asymmetry that I'm talking about, where if everything > was just a list (both returns and params) then it would be symmetric > and apply would just work. Even with tuples, lisp is still more > symmetric since you can convert a tuple to a list generically and then > pass it in with apply (according to Bruce's example). I understand your point and mostly agree with it, but keep in mind that: let f x y = (x,y) is not a function that takes 2 parameters. So, I would say that Caml is symmetric if you don't curry the arguments. Also, the style of currying everything is a little different in the SML community. Their compilers often expect (and optimize for) multiple parameters as tuples. Patrick ------------------- 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