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 TAA14446; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 19:09:40 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id TAA14414 for ; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 19:09:39 +0100 (MET) Received: from shiva.jussieu.fr (shiva.jussieu.fr [134.157.0.129]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id h1PI9dT19779 for ; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 19:09:39 +0100 (MET) 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 h1PI9bYY063364 ; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 19:09:37 +0100 (CET) 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 TAA24766 ; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 19:08:34 +0100 Received: from localhost (fernande@localhost) by ibm1.cicrp.jussieu.fr (8.8.8/jtpda/mob-v8) with ESMTP id TAA5480476 ; Tue, 25 Feb 2003 19:08:34 +0100 Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 19:08:34 +0100 (NFT) From: Diego Olivier Fernandez Pons To: bcpierce@cis.upenn.edu cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] OCaml standard library improvement In-Reply-To: <14211.1046105439@saul.cis.upenn.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE X-Antivirus: scanned by sophie at shiva.jussieu.fr Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk Bonjour, On Mon, 24 Feb 2003, Benjamin C. Pierce wrote: > I'm all in favor of improving the standard library, but... > > 1) I agree that such a project will be most useful if there is some > kind of strong unifying vision > > 2) I suggest looking at the SML Basis Library for ideas -- the people > that designed it thought a *lot* about consistent naming and such. > (In fact, would it be a bad idea just to *copy* the SML basis APIs > verbatim?) I am afraid I am not familiar with the whole SML/NJ library (rather than SML Basis Library which is quite sparse), the only thing I can truly say is that : - SML/NJ library already copies in some points Caml standard library : e.g. The pretty printing (smlnj-lib/PP) is a port of Pierre Weis one - SML/NJ library may not be the best library to copy since : smlnj-lib/Regexp is not superior to March=E9's Regexp (classical RE lib, compiled to dfa or directly interpreted), Vouillon's LibRE (lazy automata building), or to Galax (Glushkov construction) (I have not yet seen Leroy's Str new implementation) smlnj-lib/Util is not really superior to the data structures already avaible in Caml (standard library, JCF's Patricia trees, ...) smlnj-lib/HashCons is mostly equivalent to JCF ones (I remember having read somewhere that JCF actually used some tricks found in the SML/NJ library) smlnj-lib/Doc is not superior to OCamlDoc Concerning SML-Basis, if a common naming for all SML libraries was a good idea, I am afraid SML-Basis is really not enough, just providing some quite trivial minimal interfaces. And I do not really feel that SML-Basis has done, even for the few functions it provides, the 'best' choices avaible. I agree that looking in other libraries for ideas is a good thing, but this seems to have already be done concerning SML libraries. 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