Re: [Caml-list] Five Questions about Objects

[Jacques Garrigue <garrigue@kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp>]

From: Alain Frisch <frisch@clipper.ens.fr>
> On Sun, 14 Jul 2002, YAMAGATA yoriyuki wrote:
> 
> > However, I wonder why a class is necessary in the first place.  I'm
> > not familiar with the theory of OOP, but I feel like direct creation
> > of objects is possible in functional languages.
> 
> It is already possible in OCaml, thanks to local modules:
> 
> "object ... end"
> ===>
> let module M = struct class o = object ... end end in new M.o
> 
> It would be straightforward to define a Camlp4 syntax extension for this.

This only works if your object has a monomorphic type.

The real point is that if object definitions were really first class
in the language, they would not be restricted by these strange
variable binding conditions: type inference would be enough.
Since there is no theoretical problem here, it may well be a useful
extension.

  Jacques Garrigue
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