Re: [Caml-list] OCaml standard library improvement

[fva <fva@tsc.uc3m.es>]

HI all,

plese read on below Zacchiroli's suggestions...

Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:

>On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 10:43:43AM +0100, Xavier Leroy wrote:
>  
>
>>There would be disagreement as what the return type of these functions
>>should be: lists, sets, etc.  But you can easily write them with
>>Hashtbl.fold.
>>    
>>
>
>Yes, the ocaml standard library is full (i.e. empty) of a lot of
>functions that could be written easily in 1 or 2 lines of ocaml code.
>
>The same functions are the same that you find yourself rewriting in all
>the applications you are writing (or linking an "helper" module written
>once for all), this is really frustrating and I think make OCaml
>standard library less appealing than other languages standard libraries.
>
>I'm collecting from time to time a set of functions that can be easily
>added to the standard library to fill this gap. Probably a lot of other
>OCaml programmers are doing the same. Is there any chance to see this
>functions in the standard library?
>
>Better stated: if we, ocaml programmer, collect a set of functions that
>are widely felt to be missing, could the OCaml team review the
>corresponding implementation and add them to the ocaml standard library
>in the next ocaml release?
>
I think collecting these functions is a great idea and it might enhance 
the usability of our favourite language (I have conflicting emotions 
about this claim being true. Still...).

But if *we* (I am including all OCaml programmers here) think it worth 
building such a library, why bother the OCaml team by piling *more* work 
on them? As somebody in this lists has pointed out, they are already 
doing *harder* work on the (may I have my interest included here) module 
recursion problem & downcasts and whatnot and I trust their capability 
(and willingness) to work in whatever problems they think it worth.

Why not (self?)appoint, say, three persons (I don't care about many more 
with decision power to come to an agreement about anything) to receive 
would-be code and maintain a "big-s(c)ale library"... This may find its 
way into the Standard library or it may not, but would definitely make 
happy all these people wanting to contribute differentially to the whole 
OCaml effort...

Just an idea... Something to discuss...

Regards,

        Fran Valverde


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