[Caml-list] Re: Syntax extensions without Camlp4

[Jeffrey Scofield <jeffsco@pse.psellos.com>]

Daniel Bünzli <daniel.buenzli@erratique.ch> writes:

> > The problem is that it's purely for partial evaluation and not
> >  extending the syntax.
> 
> Then it's perfect ! I think it's wrong to try to extend the language
> per se. Most of the time, except for very particular things
> (e.g. introducing a monad notation), the dsl approach is perfectly
> sufficient. Don't think you absolutely need to extend the OCaml
> grammar, embed your dsl directly into OCaml, using OCaml language
> binders if you need variables.
> 
> Make libraries, not pet syntactic constructs.

For what it's worth, I heartily endorse this approach.  Use of campl4
when something simpler will do is a real burden on people learning
the language and people combining modules.  OCaml has already
fragmented into two different syntaxes, and I've already chosen to
hack several different modules for my own use by stripping out all the
syntax extensions.  In the long run this doesn't scale very well
(in my opinion).

The baseline for OCaml is already a large (rich, complex, amazing)
language.  But it's hard to pitch it to potential adopters if it's
also a rapidly moving and ramifying target.

(I should say that the syntactic flexibility is fantastic for language
researchers, it's users who are solving practical problems with the
language that I'm talking about.  I would put myself in this
category.)

Just my opinion.

Jeffrey Scofield
Seattle