RE: [Caml-list] character syntax error '^M'

[David Allsopp <dra-news@metastack.com>]

William R wrote:
> On 08/05/2013 07:38 PM, David Allsopp wrote:
> Use \r or \x0d? http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml/lex.html
> 
> On 5 Aug 2013, at 18:34, "r.3@libertysurf.fr" <r.3@libertysurf.fr> wrote:
> Dear list,
> 
> I got a new error with trunk version of ocaml.
> 
> I have in a module a code that appears like that in emacs (which is used to convert files from dos to unix) :
> String.get s (String.length s -1) = '^M'
> The thing is that '^M' is actually the return character of windows (RET)

This is not strictly true. The return *sequence* of Windows is \r\n (0x0d followed by 0x0a). It's logical only if you imagine you're on a typewriter...

> This works with ocaml 4.00, but now, with trunk version of ocaml, it tells
> me this is a "syntax error".

The support for '^M' was removed as part of PR#5598 (http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=5598) in R12420 for parsing/lexer.mll. I'm not very good at interpreting subversion changelogs (for branches), but it looks like the fix may have only been applied to trunk (by mistake?) as it's certainly not in 4.00 or 4.00.1. However, I think looking at it that 4.01 does contain that patch (i.e. behaves the same way as trunk).


David