From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: weis Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id XAA32058 for caml-redist@pauillac.inria.fr; Mon, 15 May 2000 23:02:52 +0200 (MET DST) Resent-Message-Id: <200005152102.XAA32058@pauillac.inria.fr> 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 TAA23314 for ; Mon, 15 May 2000 19:57:35 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from babbage.ececs.uc.edu (mail.ececs.uc.edu [129.137.8.2]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.10.0/8.10.0) with ESMTP id e4FHvTT18883; Mon, 15 May 2000 19:57:29 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from gatekeeper-internal.ececs.uc.edu (gatekeeper-internal.ececs.uc.edu [129.137.8.10]) by babbage.ececs.uc.edu (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA06875; Mon, 15 May 2000 13:56:54 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 13:56:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Hongwei Xi To: Max Skaller cc: Pierre Weis , caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: reference initialization In-Reply-To: <391F9FFA.942BE9B0@in.ot.com.au> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Resent-From: weis@pauillac.inria.fr Resent-Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 23:02:52 +0200 Resent-To: caml-redist@pauillac.inria.fr On Mon, 15 May 2000, Max Skaller wrote: > Hongwei Xi wrote: > > > Certainly, we can replace ? with 0. But what is really achieved? > > I would say it is simply an illusion that a program is made safer > > by initializing each array upon its allocation. > > What's happening here is this: ocaml is basically a _functional_ > programming language. In such a language there is no such thing > as a variable, _everything_ is a constant. In this view, > the notion that there can be an uninitialised variable > is absurd, since there are no variables! It is not absurd. You may think an uninitialized value having type (exists alpha.alpha), or type 'top' by making every type a subtype of 'top'. --Hongwei