Re: [Ocaml-lib-devel] IO.input / Lexing.lexbuf

[Nicolas C. <nca...@mo...>]

> A recent project required me to parse gzipped XML files using Xml-Light.
>  The most convenient way to access the gzipped files was using Extlib's
> Unzip.inflate on an IO.input stream.  However, since Xml-Light does not
> support IO or the standard OO file interface (it only supports input
> from files, Pervasives streams, strings, and lexbufs), it was necessary
> to define a wrapper function:
> 
>   let lexbuf_of_input i =
>     Lexing.from_function
>       (fun s n ->
>         try
>           IO.input i s 0 n
>         with IO.No_more_input ->
>           0);;
> 
> I just wonder whether it might be worth adding a couple of conversion
> functions along these lines to the IO module, since I can imagine them
> being generally useful?  The code is trivial, but one of the things I
> value Extlib for is that it reduces the need for boilerplate like this.

Hi Peter,

The only problem is that this would create an IO -> Lexing dependency. 
OCaml performs linkage on a per-module basis so not sure it's nice to 
add such an overweight for a single simple function.

Nicolas