Re: [Ocaml-lib-devel] ExtLib v0.1

[Eric C. C. <ec...@cm...>]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 07:54:29PM -0500, Manos Renieris wrote:
> I don't know how other people feel, but to me, the short names in
> String (ftos, stoi, stof) look very ugly.

I agree.

> String.to_float, String.to_int, and String.to_float seem much better,
> and more consistent with the choices in the standard library.
> An Int module with things like Int.of_string = int_of_string also 
> sounds like a good idea, I'm tired of moving between Int32.t's and
> int's and having to change all sorts of functions.

Good suggestions.

Another issue: I see (at least) two philosophies of exception naming.

(1) The standard library only defines a few, and uses string arguments (to
Failure and Invalid_argument) for specifics.

(2) Nicolas's collection uses more numerous and specific exceptions:
    Invalid_index
    Invalid_string
    No_such_element
    ...

I guess I'm used to the first approach, and the generality hasn't been
a problem.  I've almost always been able to write something like
    try ... with Failure _ -> ...
and often just
    try ... with _ -> ...
rather than being more specific.  What has been the experience of
others on this list?

-- 
Eric C. Cooper          e c c @ c m u . e d u