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Here is the latest Caml Weekly News, for the week of January 17 to 24, 2012.

  1. otags reloaded 3.12.1 for OCaml 3.12.1
  2. ounit v1.1.1: Unit testing framework
  3. polymorphic variants in match statements
  4. Other Caml News

otags reloaded 3.12.1 for OCaml 3.12.1

Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2012-01/msg00154.html

Hendrik Tews announced:
better late than never: I would like to announce the first
release of otags reloaded for OCaml 3.12. It is available at

    http://askra.de/software/otags/

Otags reloaded generates tags tables for emacs and vi/vim.

Note that otags (by default) refuses to compile with OCaml
3.12.0, because that version contains a bug that makes otags
quite unusable.

Otags reloaded is distributed under GPL v3.
      

ounit v1.1.1: Unit testing framework

Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2012-01/msg00157.html

Sylvain Le Gall announced:
OUnit is a unit testing framework for OCaml, inspired by the JUnit tool for
Java, and the HUnit tool for Haskell.

More information on [HUnit](http://hunit.sourceforge.net)

In version 1.1.1:

- bracket now enforce returning unit
- update examples
- ListSimpleMake now use the provided comparator for all elements

This version is already available on oasis-db (and can be installed through
odb): 
http://oasis.ocamlcore.org/dev/view/ounit/1.1.1

Homepage:
http://ounit.forge.ocamlcore.org

Get source code:
$ darcs get http://darcs.ocamlcore.org/repos/ounit

Browse source code:
http://darcs.ocamlcore.org/cgi-bin/darcsweb.cgi?r=ounit;a=summary
      

polymorphic variants in match statements

Archive: https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2012-01/msg00206.html

Milan Stanojević asked and Jacques Garrigue replied:
> Hi, we're trying to understand the type inference with polymorphic
> variants in match statements. This is a simplification of an actual
> case that happened in practice.
> 
> 1)
> let f i a =
>  match i, a with
>  | true, `A -> `B
>  | false, x -> x
> 
> fails with
> File "foo.ml", line 4, characters 16-17:
> Error: This expression has type [< `A ]
>       but an expression was expected of type [> `B ]
>       The first variant type does not allow tag(s) `B
> 
> 2) changing false to _
> let f i a =
>  match i, a with
>  | true, `A -> `B
>  | _, x -> x
> 
> this succeeds with
> val f : bool -> ([> `A | `B ] as 'a) -> 'a
> 
> 3) changing x in (1) to _ , and using a on the right side
> let f i a =
>  match i, a with
>  | true, `A -> `B
>  | false, _ -> a
> 
> this fails in the same way as (1)
> 
> 4) finally adding another case to match statement
> let f i a =
>  match i, a with
>  | true, `A -> `B
>  | false, x -> x
>  | true, x -> x
> 
> this succeeds with the same type as (2)
> 
> 
> So it seems there is some interaction between type inference and
> exhaustivnest of the match statements.
> 
> Can someone shed some light on what is going on here?

Indeed. The basic idea is to close variant types when leaving them
open would make the pattern matching non-exhaustive.
Here, if we assume that a has type [`A | `B], then the pattern-matching
becomes non-exhaustive, so the type inferred is just [`A]
(i.e. the list of all constructors appearing inside the patterns at this 
position).

Actually, the theory is a bit more complicated, and the full details are
in the following paper, but you should just expect the above behavior
in practice.

        Typing deep pattern-matching in presence of polymorphic variants.
        http://www.math.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~garrigue/papers/index.html

Note that there is also another way to make (1) type, without adding
new cases

  let f i a =
    match i, a with
    | true, `A -> `B
    | false, (`A as x) -> x;;
  val f : bool -> [< `A ] -> [> `A | `B ] = <fun>

Here we have removed the connection between a and the output,
allowing `A to be combine with `B without changing the type of a.
      

Other Caml News

From the ocamlcore planet blog:
Thanks to Alp Mestan, we now include in the Caml Weekly News the links to the
recent posts from the ocamlcore planet blog at http://planet.ocamlcore.org/.

libsndfile:
  https://forge.ocamlcore.org/projects/libsndfile/

OCaml Submodule Pattern:
  http://www.nicollet.net/2012/01/ocaml-submodule-pattern/

OUnit 1.1.1:
  http://caml.inria.fr/cgi-bin/hump.cgi?contrib=293

Otags 3.12.1:
  http://caml.inria.fr/cgi-bin/hump.cgi?contrib=294

A puzzle about typing:
  http://math.andrej.com/2012/01/20/a-puzzle-about-typing/

Happy new year from the Ocsigen team:
  http://ocsigen.org/

1D integration:
  https://forge.ocamlcore.org/projects/integration1d/

Share your mistakes: adventures in optimization:
  http://blog.incubaid.com/2012/01/17/share-your-mistakes-adventures-in-optimization/
      

Old cwn

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Alan Schmitt