Allowing variable shadowing is aesthetically more satisfying and more expressive, but opens the door to bugs that can be harder to track by static analysis. I would be interested to hear the pro-arguments for variable shadowing, besides the slight gain in expressiveness. On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote: > On Tue, Jan 03, 2012 at 01:05:39AM +0100, Lukasz Stafiniak wrote: > > On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 11:37 PM, Diego Olivier Fernandez Pons > > wrote: > > > List, > > > > > > I was wondering if there was any reason not to make "let rec" the > default / > > > sole option, meaning cases where you clearly don't want a "let rec" > instead > > > of "let" (only in functions, not cyclic data). > > > > > > Diego Olivier > > > > The default "no-rec" allows for name recycling -- using the same name > > for an incrementally transformed value, i.e. to bind the intermediate > > results. Name recycling minimizes the cognitive burden: there are less > > names to remember in a scope, and differences in names are justified > > by differences in purpose of the values. Are there reasons to consider > > name recycling a bad style? > > I had an argument about this with a noted open source developer > recently. He was saying that C's approach -- not permitting variable > names to be reused within a single function -- was somehow > advantageous. From my point of view, having used both languages > extensively, OCaml's way is *far* better. > > So yes, 'let' and 'let rec', long may they be different. > > Rich. > > -- > Richard Jones > Red Hat > > -- > Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management and archives: > https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list > Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners > Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs > >