Re: [Caml-list] Newbie comment on constructor syntax

[Andreas Rossberg <rossberg@mpi-sws.org>]

On 11/09/2015 11:16 AM, Alain Frisch wrote:
> On 09/11/2015 09:09, Soegtrop, Michael wrote:
>> The notation looks like tuples, both in definition and use, but it isn't.
>
> The should be not big obstacle to allow using real tuples
> (values/patterns) with multi-argument constructors, thus perhaps
> reducing the confusion.  In expression at least, this should be quite
> straightfoward because it can be understood as a local syntactic
> rewriting ("C e" -> "let (x1, ..., xn) = e in C (x1, ..., xn)" when C is
> a constructor with arity > 1 and "e" is not a syntactic tuple).
>
> See:
> http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=6455

Yes please, I would appreciate such sugar. Even more I would appreciate 
generalising that to allowing constructors to be used as first-class 
expressions (i.e., unapplied "C" -> "fun (x1,...,xN) -> C (x1,...,xN)" 
when C is a constructor with arity > 0). I had to write some AST mapping 
code recently that would have vastly benefited from that.

/Andreas