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 MAA01153; Tue, 5 Feb 2002 12:23:38 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id MAA00995 for ; Tue, 5 Feb 2002 12:23:37 +0100 (MET) Received: from fichte.ai.univie.ac.at (fichte.ai.univie.ac.at [131.130.174.156]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id g15BNaH11667 for ; Tue, 5 Feb 2002 12:23:36 +0100 (MET) Received: from chopin.ai.univie.ac.at (root@chopin.ai.univie.ac.at [131.130.174.170]) by fichte.ai.univie.ac.at (8.9.3/8.9.3/Debian 8.9.3-21) with ESMTP id MAA12265; Tue, 5 Feb 2002 12:23:35 +0100 Received: (from markus@localhost) by chopin.ai.univie.ac.at (8.9.3/8.9.3/Debian 8.9.3-21) id MAA26021; Tue, 5 Feb 2002 12:23:35 +0100 Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 12:23:35 +0100 From: Markus Mottl To: dbmcclain Cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Re: Syntax Changes in OCaml Message-ID: <20020205112335.GB25187@chopin.ai.univie.ac.at> Mail-Followup-To: dbmcclain , caml-list@inria.fr References: <001701c1add4$f5098b80$210148bf@dylan> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <001701c1add4$f5098b80$210148bf@dylan> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.26i Organization: Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk On Mon, 04 Feb 2002, dbmcclain wrote: > But this greater discussion has me wondering about whether you are > talking of more egregious changes to the language syntax.... If so, > it will certainly push me as a user to consider other alternatives. I > don't wish to spend my time rewriting old code to keep up with a moving > target language... There may be a misunderstanding here: the problem with the recent changes, even if they were rather innocuous, is that you really have to adapt your sources. At least for me this was not a big deal, because I had mostly avoided labels so far, but it would be a nightmare if large parts of the syntax changed. However, a shift to revised (or another) syntax as default wouldn't be all this bad: the preprocessor would still handle "normal" syntax, which means that you'd only have to feed your existing sources through the preprocessor. This can be done by changing only one line in your Makefile. You could even continue writing and maintaining code in "normal" syntax, similar to those few people who are currently using revised syntax as alternative - without problems other than "social" ones. The only problem I can imagine for you is that you have to pass maintainance of your source base to a young programmer who has only been trained on revised syntax. But even then I don't think that this will be too serious, because fixing bugs in a slightly different syntax isn't all this difficult. Mixing revised and normal syntax (in different files, of course) is absolutely not a problem either: just add a comment to the top of your files so that the right preprocessor can be chosen automagically (as is being supported by OcamlMakefile, for example). A sudden transition to revised syntax would probably cost me less than a week, most of it due to getting used to the new syntax. I don't know for sure, but this may be true for the majority of users. Regards, Markus Mottl -- Markus Mottl markus@oefai.at Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.oefai.at/~markus ------------------- 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