[Caml-list] Non-mutable strings

["Mattias Waldau" <mattias.waldau@abc.se>]

I noted in the comments for Ocaml 3.02

- Removed re-sharing of string literals, causes too many surprises with 
  in-place string modifications.


and therefor assumes that if I have a function like

let foo x =
	"This is a string", x ;;

will foo create a new string each time foo is called?

Assume that I know that no one will in-place edit the string, I could
rewrite the code into the more efficient

let str = "This is a string";;
let foo x =
	str, x ;;

and all calls to foo will get the same string.


Is this true?


If so, I wonder why not the standard strings of Ocaml are nonmutable?
It works fine for languages like Visual Basic, and Visual Basic has
great string performance compared to languages like C++.

The only thing important to make nonmutable strings efficient
is to make sure that the operation += (appending a string 
to an old string, where the old string probably isn't needed 
anymore) is efficient. (Look at a ASP/JSP-page and you will 
understand why :-).

The reason I think nonmutable strings should be the default is that
Ocaml should try to prevent hard-to-find bugs, and allowing in-change
editing of strings is a typical case. (I can definitily live without
mutable strings, but mutable fields, ref, and arrays I cannot live
without.)

/mattias

P.s. Could phantom types be used to close (=make const) strings, arrays,
and maybe even mutable/ref, so that clients are not allowed to change 
them?



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