From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id VAA17425; Tue, 5 Feb 2002 21:47:40 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id VAA18135 for ; Tue, 5 Feb 2002 21:47:39 +0100 (MET) Received: from wetware.wetware.com (wetware.wetware.com [199.108.16.1]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id g15Klc922962 for ; Tue, 5 Feb 2002 21:47:38 +0100 (MET) Received: from kallisti.apple.com(wetware.wetware.com[199.108.16.1]) (2201 bytes) by wetware.wetware.com via sendmail with P:esmtp/R:bind_hosts/T:inet_zone_bind_smtp (sender: ) id for ; Tue, 5 Feb 2002 12:47:37 -0800 (PST) (Smail-3.2.0.114 2001-Aug-6 #1 built 2002-Jan-4) Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 12:48:06 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v480) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Subject: [Caml-list] syntax foo From: james woodyatt To: The Trade Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.480) Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk everyone-- I have been keeping my opinions on this subject to myself in the hopes that it would not be *me* who would initiate a debate I'm sure many will find unwelcome. Now that the subject has come up and everyone who really wants to opt out has written mail filters, I feel safe to join. I've studied the revised syntax. I've studied and mastered the standard syntax. Here's what I think about them: + The standard syntax is weird. But it's not half as weird as Perl. I come from Perl culture. I am not here to complain about syntax. + The revised syntax is clean. But it feels "chunky"-- I see a lot more brackets and braces. I've grown accustomed to the free-verse style available in the standard syntax, even if it is weird. But I am not here to complain about syntax. + Like with Ocaml, I learned Perl 5 on my own time. They're changing the syntax again in Perl 6. I plan to learn Perl 6 only when I'm paid for it. + With the inclusion of camlp4 in the distribution, I don't have to care about the syntax of the language. There's a parser and a printer to handle any conversions I may ever need to make. If there isn't, I can write one. In the end, the syntax is irrelevant; it's the semantics I care about. I am not here to complain about syntax. Here's why I don't want to see the Ocaml team make any changes to the syntax: I'm certain they have more important things they could be doing. Like, for example, support for dynamic loading of native code on Mac OS X. -- j h woodyatt "...the antidote to misinformation is more information, not less." --vinton cerf ------------------- Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr