From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id WAA00339 for caml-red; Fri, 26 Jan 2001 22:09:39 +0100 (MET) 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 RAA03239 for ; Thu, 25 Jan 2001 17:02:45 +0100 (MET) Received: from info.numeric-quest.com (info.numeric-quest.com [204.187.76.36]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with SMTP id f0PG2hL18532 for ; Thu, 25 Jan 2001 17:02:44 +0100 (MET) Received: (qmail 13071 invoked by uid 500); 25 Jan 2001 11:20:54 -0000 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 25 Jan 2001 11:20:54 -0000 Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 06:20:54 -0500 (EST) From: Jan Skibinski To: Markus Mottl cc: OCAML Subject: Re: Announcement: LACAML In-Reply-To: <20010125135807.A18259@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: weis@pauillac.inria.fr Markus, Some final comments... > > I do not know whether similar approach would be feasible with > > Ocaml objects, but if yes then I would recommend it highly. > > I think that default arguments in OCaml are a very fine means to hide the > complexity of function interfaces without sacrificing richness of features > and efficiency. I do not follow ocaml closely enough to appreciate supposed elegancy and efficiency of default arguments. If by this you mean that you can shorten the list of arguments when user wants to use defaults, but he still needs to supply all of them otherwise then this sounds as half a solution to me. By going this route you will present the user with exactly the same complexity as the original Fortran specification. To respond to your other objections I point you to a short introduction: http://www.eiffel.com/doc/eiffelworld/5.1/new_release.html Please do not take it lightly: LANPACK is a complex piece of software and there is no reason why your library would follow suit all those complexities and other quirks. Jan