Re: [Ocaml-lib-devel] Xarray try #2

[Brian H. <bri...@ql...>]

On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, Nicolas Cannasse wrote:

> Excellent, but since this is an "advanced feature", I suggest that you move
> the resizers to the end of the mli, so they will appear at the end of the
> documentation.

No problemo.  The only reason they're first is that they're that way in 
the .ml file.

> 
> > - The .mli file now has doc comments!  Yay!  The .ml file still needs to
> > be commented.
> 
> Does it really needs ?
> I don't especially like comments in source files, they are only needed when
> you're doing something very difficult to understand...

I have been surprised at what is "intuitively obvious" one day, and 
"completely inexplicable" sometime later.  While I don't think there is 
any 'inexplicable' code in this source file, I'm a firm beleiver in better 
safe than sorry.

> 
> > - Length is the length of the actual underlying storage array, used is the
> > number of elements in that array actually being used.  I've decided on
> > that nomenclature, and started sticking by it.
> 
> Let me disagree on it :)
> Since users are used to use the "length" keyword for both Array and List, it
> would be better to have "length" being the number of elements and "size"
> being the underlying structure size.

Agreed.  And this should be mentioned in the documentation.

> 
> Last thing : renaming Xarray to Vector ?

I *hate* the name vector for resizable arrays- I do too much LinAlg.  A 
vector is a specific mathematical concept, which while it can be 
implemented as an array doesn't have to be, it can be some more 
complicated datastructure.  Consider sparse vectors.  While I'm willing to 
admit that Xarray isn't the best possible name, I like it better than 
Vector.

Brian