On Tue, Jan 03, 2012 at 01:05:39AM +0100, Lukasz Stafiniak wrote: > On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 11:37 PM, Diego Olivier Fernandez Pons > <[email protected]> wrote: > > List, > > > > I was wondering if there was any reason not to make "let rec" the default / > > sole option, meaning cases where you clearly don't want a "let rec" instead > > of "let" (only in functions, not cyclic data). > > > > Diego Olivier > > The default "no-rec" allows for name recycling -- using the same name > for an incrementally transformed value, i.e. to bind the intermediate > results. Name recycling minimizes the cognitive burden: there are less > names to remember in a scope, and differences in names are justified > by differences in purpose of the values. Are there reasons to consider > name recycling a bad style?
I had an argument about this with a noted open source developer recently. He was saying that C's approach -- not permitting variable names to be reused within a single function -- was somehow advantageous. From my point of view, having used both languages extensively, OCaml's way is *far* better. So yes, 'let' and 'let rec', long may they be different. Rich. -- Richard Jones Red Hat -- Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management and archives: https://sympa-roc.inria.fr/wws/info/caml-list Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
