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Re: OCAML, was CMinusMins, was Re: [Qemu-devel] get_func() hangs with gc
From: |
Mark A. Williamson |
Subject: |
Re: OCAML, was CMinusMins, was Re: [Qemu-devel] get_func() hangs with gcc 3.4.2 on MinGW and WinXP host |
Date: |
Mon, 17 Jan 2005 16:13:02 +0000 |
User-agent: |
KMail/1.6.2 |
Apologies for going slightly OT. I don't want to start a fight, so I'll just
give a brief explanation.
> What is Objective CAML?
OCAML is a dialect of ML (Meta Language), the other main dialect being
Standard ML (SML). The ML family is a functional language with eager
evaluation semantics (function arguments are evaluated before calling a
function).
There is a strong emphasis on immutable data structures although all ML
dialects that I know of include traditional features (pointers,
assignment...) as well. ML languages use a very powerful type-checker with a
"type inference" algorithm (it figures out what types things should have) and
powerful support for functions that return other functions or take others as
arguments (nicer than function pointers).
OCAML adds Object orientation features to the ML dialect CAML.
There are various pros and cons to functional languages and I don't want to
start a fight over the relative merits of different paradigms. There's lots
more information on the web, Google, Foldoc and Wikipedia will probably all
provide useful information.
HTH,
Mark