From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5B641BC28 for ; Wed, 3 Nov 2004 22:09:27 +0100 (CET) Received: from pauillac.inria.fr (pauillac.inria.fr [128.93.11.35]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id iA3L9QaB032321 for ; Wed, 3 Nov 2004 22:09:27 +0100 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 WAA17352 for ; Wed, 3 Nov 2004 22:09:26 +0100 (MET) Received: from shade.msu.ru (shade.msu.ru [193.232.127.27]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id iA3L9PJF032312 for ; Wed, 3 Nov 2004 22:09:26 +0100 Received: from localhost (serge@localhost) by shade.msu.ru (8.11.6/8.9.3) with ESMTP id iA3LB8a18264 for ; Thu, 4 Nov 2004 00:11:08 +0300 Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 00:11:08 +0300 (MSK) From: Serge To: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Worsening standard library Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 41894906.001 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 41894905.001 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml:01 extensively:01 integers:01 doubles:01 ocaml:01 stdin:01 floats:01 std:02 parse:02 let:03 library:03 library:03 ugly:03 serge:05 serge:05 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.0 (2004-09-13) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none autolearn=disabled version=3.0.0 X-Spam-Level: Gentlemen! I think this might be kinda offtopic, but nevertheless. OCaml is being extensively employed for educational purposes, and it looks like it is still missing an important feature - the one of easy reading numbers (integers/floats/doubles) from, say, standard input. You have to read lines and parse numbers out of them. For instance, in Pascal it was possible to do "read(x)". Absence of such feature distracts people from trying to program sensible things in OCaml. It would be nice to have such functionality in the standard library. I do not wish to start a rant like "let us include simplex method in the std since it is gravely important" etc., but I do think that _ability to read numbers from stdin in a standard way_ is very important for the language like OCaml - because students want it very much, and it is not ugly in any way. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Serge S. Bityukov, Moscow State University, Dept of Mechanics and Mathematics