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 OAA10556; Mon, 21 Oct 2002 14:11:45 +0200 (MET DST) 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 OAA10807 for ; Mon, 21 Oct 2002 14:11:44 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from shiva.jussieu.fr (shiva.jussieu.fr [134.157.0.129]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id g9LCBhD04361 for ; Mon, 21 Oct 2002 14:11:43 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from ibm3.cicrp.jussieu.fr (ibm3.cicrp.jussieu.fr [134.157.15.3]) by shiva.jussieu.fr (8.12.5/jtpda-5.4) with ESMTP id g9LCArjR036925 ; Mon, 21 Oct 2002 14:11:07 +0200 (CEST) Received: from ibm1.cicrp.jussieu.fr (ibm1.cicrp.jussieu.fr [134.157.15.1]) by ibm3.cicrp.jussieu.fr (8.8.8/jtpda/mob-V8) with ESMTP id OAA43456 ; Mon, 21 Oct 2002 14:09:21 +0200 Received: from localhost (fernande@localhost) by ibm1.cicrp.jussieu.fr (8.8.8/jtpda/mob-v8) with ESMTP id OAA2138220 ; Mon, 21 Oct 2002 14:09:20 +0200 Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 14:09:20 +0200 (DST) From: Diego Olivier Fernandez Pons To: "Kontra, Gergely" cc: Caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] types & design advices (musical program) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Antivirus: scanned by sophie at shiva.jussieu.fr Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk On Mon, 21 Oct 2002, Kontra, Gergely wrote: > [...] > > >If you mean harmonisation, it is a well known problem and has been > >studied in constraint programming world (since it is a declarative > >problem). > [...] > > That being the case, Prolog is the right language to implement this > problem, isn't it? (Well, it doesn't have static type checking...) > Pure Prolog won't be of much help, so by Prolog we mean CLP (Prolog IV, CHIP, etc.) Prolog has several problems that haven't been yet correctly solved : - no static type-checking, no type inference - awfully slow (even compiled Prologs) - unredable programs if their natural form is not declarative - no modules (I saw recently a post by Fages in the prolog-list proposing to develop a Caml-like module system, but for the moment it hasn't been done), no first-class functions - very few librairies In the Lambda Prolog FAQ you can read that Lambda Prolog has : - polymorphic typing - modular programming - abstract data types - higher order programming www.cse.psu.edu/~dale/lProlog/faq/faq.html (There terms do not have always exactly the same meaning that in ML world) But Lambda Prolog is not yet a mature language and you still have serious problems when you need to write non declarative code. For the moment, the best systems seem to be CLP libraries over an already existing language, like : - ILOG Solver (C++) - Screamer (Lisp) - FaCiLe (Caml) The FaCiLe description points out that : "As FaCiLe is an OCaml library and not "yet another language", the user benefits from type inference and string typing discipline, high level of abstraction, modules and objects system, as well as native code compilation efficiency, garbage collection and replay debugger, all features of OCaml (among other) that allow to prototype and experiment quickly : modeling, data processing and interface are implemented with the same powerful and efficient language" Diego Olivier ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners