Dear all,

Thanks for this inspiring discussion.

The integration of large pieces of code into OCaml standard library is
maybe not the best solution as it will never fulfill everyone's needs. I
like the idea of having a Swiss army knife standard library rather than a
heavy weight set of tools. However, filling existing minor gaps in the
standard library would probably improve programmers day-to-day experience.
Below are some examples:

- Integers, floats and options, for instance, would deserve their own
module for functor application.

- More functions on option type, such as eval, iter, map. Something like
this:
let eval f x = try Some (f x) with _ -> None
let iter f = function None -> () | Some x -> f x
let map f = function None -> None | Some x -> eval f x

- The standard library includes incr and decr on integer references, but
none of the useful C-like operators with assignment such as += that save a
lot of time in situations (there are some) where references are heavily
used.
let ( += ) r n = r := !r + n

- An efficient set of string searching functions would help a lot (no
regexp). Something like Boyer-Moore, KMP or even Rabin-Karp algorithms.
- String.explode / implode to convert to/from char list.
- Trivial functions such as read_file or read_text_file.
- The identity function!
- All fold functions should have a foldi counterpart, and the same set of
iterators should occur in all modules.

Then, for more specialized requirements, I think it may be better to
contribute directly to improve third party libraries.

Kind regards,
Edouard


2015-08-27 9:20 GMT+01:00 Daniil Baturin <daniil@baturin.org>:

>
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> It often provokes exact same feelings as OCaml standard library,
> especially the prelude.  There are also reimplementations of it, e.g.
> https://hackage.haskell.org/package/classy-prelude
>
> GHC authors also keep the old stuff for backwards compatibility.
>
> What I think can serve as a source of inspiration is the Haskell
> Platform or the Python distribution. They are distributed with a set of
> more or less self-contained modules that once were or still are
> third-party libraries. This is especially convenient on platforms not
> friendly to automatic package management.
>
> On 08/27/2015 02:07 PM, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Thanks for having started this thread.
> >
> > I am wondering to which extent the standard library of a language such
> > as Haskell could be a source of inspiration for OCaml?
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Sébastien.
> >
>
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-- 
Edouard Evangelisti
Post doctoral Research Associate
Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge University (SLCU)
Bateman Street
Cambridge CB2 1LR (United Kingdom)