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Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2007 19:33:36 +0100
To: David Allsopp <dra-news@metastack.com>
Cc: "'Caml-list List'" <caml-list@inria.fr>
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] If OCaml were a car
Message-ID: <20070821183335.GA32626@furbychan.cocan.org>
References: <20070819170704.GA10089@furbychan.cocan.org> <005a01c7e3ca$0ce14fa0$6a7ba8c0@treble>
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From: Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org>
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X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml:01 0100,:01 o'caml:01 syntax:01 emacs:01 ocaml:01 command-line:01 argv:01 wrote:01 avoids:01 caml-list:01 define:02 rarely:02 variables:02 variables:02 

On Tue, Aug 21, 2007 at 09:05:33AM +0100, David Allsopp wrote:
> (* first function *)
> let f x = (* definition of f *)
> in
>   let g x = (* definition of g *)
>   (* etc, etc *)
> 
> (* next function *)
> let h x = (* definition of *)
> 
> Here, O'Caml helpfully tells me that there's a syntax error on line 7 which
> is of course complete rubbish!! It may be easy to spot here, but I've
> absent-mindedly missed the final part of a bigger function mid-development

I find that using tuareg-mode (an Emacs mode for OCaml) generally
avoids this problem.

[...]
> I'd go one further - and recommend that all top level statements are
> function definitions (there's so rarely a need to use global "variables"...
> it usually comes back to bite you at some point later). Then define a

No I use top level "variables" all the time.  It depends what sort of
program you're writing, but for once-through command-line programs you
will often do things like:

let dbname = (* something involving Sys.argv *) ;;
let dbh = PGOCaml.connect ~dbname () ;;

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat