On Fri, 24 Aug 2012, Ramana Kumar wrote:
Changes don't have to add complexity. The point here is to make it even
possible to add those changes that are actually simplifications (like
degrading abstype), or which are simple conveniences (like line
comments, or bars before first match clauses).
I've never quite understood what was wrong with poor old abstype. When I
learned SML in 1993, I was told "abstype is bad, use functors instead".
And when the awkward functorial style became unfashionable, there was
opaque signature matching :> as newcomer.
Much later we discovered that :> actually has some problems of abstract
types and toplevel pretty printing, even in SML/NJ. This proves that the
later tinkering on the SML'97 module system was never fully pushed through
the implementations, both SML/NJ and Poly/ML. And I've become a happy
user of old abstype with old non-opaque signature matching in recent
years.
Makarius
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