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From: Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com>
Organization: Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Variants & structural ordering
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 15:04:38 +0000
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X-Spam: no; 0.00; variants:01 damien:01 guichard:01 ocaml's:01 haskell's:01 afaict:01 ocaml:01 ocaml's:01 achilles:98 heel:98 grief:98 frog:98 equality:01 polymorphic:01 wrote:01 

On Tuesday 05 February 2008 08:21:21 Damien Guichard wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> Typically, when you declare:
>
> type card =
>
>   | Card of int
>   | Jack
>   | Queen
>   | King
>   | Ace
>
>   ;;
>
> The relation you wish is:
>
> Card(2) < ...< Card(10) < Jack < Queen < King < Ace
>
> And that's what you get when using F#.

Comparison is OCaml's achilles heel and this is one (minor) manifestation of 
that. The ability to develop a program and break a use of polymorphic 
comparison buried within it without knowing is far more serious and has 
caused many people untold grief in the past.

SML's equality types are a slight improvement but F# and Haskell's solutions 
are the best way forward AFAICT. OCaml will never be fixed in this sense but, 
hopefully, a next-generation FPL implementation will solve these problems 
without sacrificing OCaml's other benefits.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e