I'm trying to use an OCaml program to form an umambiguous protocol specification. I've convinced myself that by proper definition of my types, and avoiding using the _ in matches, I can get OCaml to help me verify that I have a complete specification. I'm doing this by defining a function that specifies the behavior of one of the protocol partners when it receives a message. Here is an example of what I have. let requestOp = REQUEST_KEY | SUCCESS;; let message = None | Register of requestOp * int;; let receive idList msg = match message with None -> None | Register( REQUEST_KEY, id ) -> begin match idList with [] -> Register(SUCCESS, id) | l when (List.mem id l) -> Register(Success, (next_available_id l)) | _ -> Register(Success, id) ;; The problem is with the final pattern in the inner match expression. I'm really trying to avoid using _ in patterns so that I'm forced to specify an action for each possible case (hence the reason I'm trying to use OCaml here). It appears that since I'm using a guard here that OCaml can't, at compile time, determine whether or not I'm being exhaustive. Is there a way to accomplish the same thing as above without using guards so that OCaml will be able to determine that my match is exhaustive?