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Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 13:04:36 +1000
To: Dave Mason <dmason@sarg.Ryerson.CA>, caml-list@inria.fr
From: John Skaller <skaller@maxtal.com.au>
Subject: Re: irritability of structure name conflicts
In-Reply-To: <199907131759.NAA00710@sarg.Ryerson.CA>
References: <Your message of "Mon, 12 Jul 1999 19:20:36 +0200."             <378A23E4.ECEDD6DB@ps.uni-sb.de>
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At 13:59 13/07/99 -0400, Dave Mason wrote:
>Is there some way I can force it to interpret the type constructor as
>a particular type so that it chooses the labels from the correct set?

This problem pervades ocaml. Another case of it is variants:

	type A = X | Y;
	type B = X | Z;

which all compiles fine, but then X is a constructor for
the B variant.

C also has the same problem with enumerations:

	enum X {a,b,c}; /* a,b,c are globals */

The problem can be solved, clumbsily, by wrapping inside a module.
(In C++, inside a class or namespace)

While I'm also expressing irritation, when I compile
a file (as opposed to using the interactive system);
rebinding of symbols shouldn't be allowed:

	let a = 1;;
	...
	let a = 1.0;;
	...
	print_int a;; 

	(* what does that strange type error mean! 
   	   a is an integer! It is right there at the top of the file!
	*)

Another similar case is 

	open List
	open Map
	iter ... 

Woops! I meant List.iter, not Map.iter :-)

There are several solutions, but the one that could
be implemented now with least impact would be to
issue warnings whenever a symbol is rebound
in the same scope during batch compilation.

(No warning in the interactive system; rebinding
to fix mistakes is common)

-------------------------------------------------------
John Skaller    email: skaller@maxtal.com.au
		http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
		phone: 61-2-96600850
		snail: 10/1 Toxteth Rd, Glebe NSW 2037, Australia