On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 9:40 PM, Yaron Minsky
<yminsky@gmail.com> wrote:
Anyone who plays around with the Core library that Jane Street just released can see showcased a rather ugly detail of how Core's design interacts with how OCaml displays types. Witness:
# Int.of_string;;
- : string -> Core.Std.Int.stringable = <fun>
# Float.of_string;;
- : string -> Core_extended.Std.Float.stringable = <fun>
I'd be much happier if this was rendered in the following equally correct and more readable form:
# Int.of_string;;
- : string -> Int.t = <fun>
# Float.of_string;;
- : string -> Float.t = <fun>
Or even:
# Int.of_string;;
- : string -> int = <fun>
# Float.of_string;;
- : string -> float = <fun>
And this isn't just an issue in the top-level. The compiler also displays types in the same difficult to read form. I'm wondering if anyone has some thoughts as to what we can do to make the compiler make better choices here. There are two issues to overcome:
- Dropping the module name. I'd love to give the compiler the hint that Core.Std. could be dropped from the prefix in a context where that module is open. This is what's done with the pervasives module already, I believe, so it seems like it should be doable here.
- Choosing shorter names. This one seems harder, but there are various different possibilities for what type name to print out, and a reasonable heuristic to use might be to pick the shortest one. Part of the reason these issues come up is our use of standardized interface components (that's where the "stringable" type name comes from). I suspect this one will be hard to fix, sadly.
Anyway, we'd be happy with any suggestions on how to improve matters.
y