On 10/17/06, Jacques Garrigue <garrigue@math.nagoya-u.ac.jp> wrote:

From: Tom <tom.primozic@gmail.com>

> val Pervasives.input_binary_int : in_channel -> int

This will indeed read a 32-bit integer, but on a 32-bit architecture
ocaml int's are 31-bit, so you loose the highest bit.
Note that on a 64-bit architecture this is sufficient for 32-bit
integers!

> val Pervasives.read_int : unit -> int

This one reads a string...

> val Marshal.from_channel : in_channel -> 'a

And this one reads a marshalled value, which must include a special
header indicating its ocaml representation.

So if you really need to read a full 32-bit integer, none of these
will work, and you must do the job by hand.

Jacques Garrigue

Thanks to everybody. I found a library called extlib which provides a module called IO. I solved the problem with

let l = Int32.float_of_bits (IO.read_real_i32 input)

BTW, I am a bit surprised the standard library does not offer a way to do that. A simple task can become frustrating.

Bye

Maurizio