Reason: A new interface to OCaml

Re:Reason: A new interface to OCaml by jordwalke on Wednesday May 18, 2016 @05:49AM (#11720774)

> In OCaml they are not first class, that is, you can't pass the as arguments, or partially apply them. That's why it makes sense for the declaration to look like a tuple, and the use to look like a function applied to a tuple--well, somewhat, you can still argue that it's still confusing because you might expect to be able to apply the constructor to a tuple variable, but well, such is life

If I understand what you're saying, you provided a reason why variant arguments should not look like function application (because they have different semantics than function application), and then in the same paragraph suggested that variant arguments should have tuple syntax, while admitting that they don't actually have tuple semantics either.

The truth is that variant arguments in `Reason` actually do not have function application syntax - note the distinguishing, leading capitalized letter on the variant. Sure, they share the fact that arguments are specified via a space separated list, but function application doesn't have a monopoly on the syntactic pattern of things separated by spaces. The argument quickly breaks down.

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Re:Reason: A new interface to OCaml by alex_muscar on Wednesday May 18, 2016 @10:54AM (#11722388)

I didn't say constructor arguments don't have tuple semantics :). In OCaml tuples are a "unit", i.e. you can't use (,) as an operator. In that sense they match with the constructor semantics: it needs all its arguments at once. It's the constructors not being functions that I was complaining about. Also, I'd say that capitalisation alone is not enough to compensate for constructors looking like they're curried functions. But that's just a matter of taste.

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