[Fwd: Re: [Caml-list] Re: Improving OCaml's choice of type to display]

[Julien Signoles <Julien.Signoles@cea.fr>]

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Sorry, forgot the caml-list.

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From: Julien Signoles <Julien.Signoles@cea.fr>
To: Jun Furuse <jun.furuse@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Re: Improving OCaml's choice of type to display
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:48:36 +0200
Message-ID: <4AD2ED64.8020408@cea.fr>

Jun Furuse a écrit :
> I have quickly wrote a small patch against 3.11.1 for this feature, to
> see what it would be like.
> 
> http://sites.google.com/a/furuse.info/jun/hacks/other-small-ocaml-patches
> 
> With this patch, path names are printed without opened modules in the
> context. 

Do not print included modules as well would be better. However, after a 
quick look in the source of the caml compiler, it seems to be really 
harder to implement that the "do not print opened" rule.

It also tries heuristic data type name simplification: if a
> variant/record data type is an alias of another data type whose name
> is shorter than the original, the printer uses the latter.

> # type long_name = int;;
> type long_name = int
> # (1 : t);;
> - : t = 1                     (* t is the shorter than its original type int *)
> # (1 : long_name);;
> - : int = 1                   (* int is shorter name for long_name. t
> is even shorter but not aliased unfortunatelly. *)

I definitevely prefer to have long_name instead of int here: long_name 
is the name that the user choses in this context. From my point of view, 
the compiler should always use the name choosen by the user whenever 
possible.

--
Julien