[MLton-devel] A CM replacement for MLton

[Henry Cejtin]

The  problem  with  just doing the straight cmcat stuff is that it means that
programs would be written in MLton with no easy translation to SML.  I  would
hate that.  (Of course, one could always simply not use the scoping aspects.)

My thoughts on the whole thing revolve around the fact that what the  scoping
is  is  REALLY  a new language.  I don't disagree that the changes are needed
for programming in the large (although C has survived without them  and  also
needs  them).   Given  that point of view, I would rather that the scoping in
the large NOT be tied to file structure quite so intimately,  but  to  actual
language  constructs.   Of course you still need some tie so that end-of-file
pops back, but that isn't much more than is already  there  in  `use',  which
demands that each file be a <program>.

A  minor  point  is  the  environment  stuff.   I  tend  to dislike using the
environment because of  its  completely  flat  unstructured  name  space.   A
modification  would  be  to  have  variables  for  our  system,  which  would
communicate from parent .mlb files to child .mlb files, and then to  have  an
option  which  would  set a .mlb variable from the environment.  There are, I
think, 2 distinctions here:

Where standard .mlb files would now be specified by having the top .mlb  file
start  with  certain  variables filled in.  That would be clearly part of the
spec rather than requiring,  and  possibly  over-writting,  user  environment
variables.   Also  it  lets  you  have  a  higher level .mlb file export path
segments to children.  In some sense this is what is going on with the notion
of `current directory', but it would be more flexible here.

Any way, I am not too happy about that, but I'm still trying to figure what I
think I would want.  The above accepts the notion that one might want to  use
environment variables as a convenience to having different versions of things
and the like.



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