RE: [Caml-list] variant with tuple arg in pattern match?

[jgm@cs.cornell.edu]

> Type-based compilation strategies such as TAL and FLINT can deal with
> this issue, but at considerable cost in complexity of the compiler and
> execution speed.

Er, you mean TIL :-)  TAL doesn't care which one you choose.

> Frankly, I think there is no point in maintaining the illusion that
> datatype constructors are either nullary (constant) or unary.  The
> only efficient implementation model is N-ary constructors, so let's
> reflect this in the language.

I agree.  Besides, if you're going to go the uniform route, why not
have all constructors be unary?  This always annoyed me in SML.  

> I agree that in an ideal world the syntax of the declaration should
> make this more explicit, e.g. the CamlP4 way ("Foo of int and int"
> vs. "Foo of int * int").  The current "syntactic overloading" of "*"
> in constructor declarations is sometimes misleading, but did make the
> conversion from Caml V3.1 code convenient a long, long time ago...

What's wrong with "Foo of int,int" or "Foo of (int,int)"?

JGM
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