Ezra's Research

Gripes with OCaml:

• Types that are declared in an interface file also need to be redeclared in the implementation file.
• let is stranger word than fun (as in SML) for declaring functions
• OCamlMakefile doesn't detect dependencies if the interface file is not mentioned in SOURCES; "X and Y have inconsistent assumptions"
• No built-in "compose" combinator, can't use o (as in SML) or . (as in Haskell)
• No before form as in SML (very useful when debugging, checking return values)
• a record type cannot be given directly within a variant constructor declaration (e.g. Foo of {field : string}).
• Syntax errors are often unhelpful (Syntax error)
• Never helpfully points out that you might've partially applied a function when you meant to fully apply it (Haskell does help in this way!).
• Interactive shell is very difficult to use:
  • It is picky about terminating each expression with exactly two semicolons.
  • There are lots of special commands for loading modules (open FooModule is never enough) and they have different conventions: for example, some begin with # and require an exact filename. I never know what file needs to be #loaded.
• The build system detects when a module's interface has changed, but forces programmer to do something about it.
• The built-in regexp interface is very clunky:
  • Str.quote needlessly returns a string instead of a regexp, requiring me to then call Str.regexp whenever I use it.
  • Str.string_match needlessly requires an integer argument designating the index at which I'd like to start matching. This should, of course, be an optional argument or a distinct form of the function (Perl seems to have gotten along okaytaken over the world without a silly index argument on regex matching).
• The Map module for finite maps provides a map function for transforming the domain of the map, but doesn't provide a way to transform the keys.