Re: [Caml-list] Evaluation Order

[John Max Skaller <skaller@ozemail.com.au>]

David McClain wrote:

> The results of these two operations, integers, are arithmetically commutable
> under addition. But what isn't commutable is the order in which these
> operations occur. No current type checking in OCaml (or any other language
> with which I am familiar) could help catch this mistake.

	In principle, the Felix type checker would prevent this:
side-effects are not permitted in functions. In practice,
I had to relax the syntax permitted in functions, and the current
translator doesn't check for side effects yet. You can also
cheat, by wrapping C functions as Felix functions: there's no
way to check if the C function has side effects or not.

	The reason for relaxing the rules is that it is very ugly
and insecure to write things like:

	val x : int; // uninitialised variable!
	fetch(&x, &state_object);

instead of

	val x : int = fetch(&state_object);

I can't think of good way around this though.

-- 
John (Max) Skaller, mailto:skaller@maxtal.com.au
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