From: Martin Weber <Ephaeton@...>
Date: 2003-08-26T00:45:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Rite/Ruby2.0 & Ruby vs OCaml

On Tue, Aug 26, 2003 at 12:10:21AM +0900, Brian Candler wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 25, 2003 at 02:23:56PM +0900, Jason Watkins wrote:
> > OCaml is a fine language, but it certainly is not as fun as ruby... unless
> > you're a functional languages geek :P.
> 
> I'm not sure that even functional languages geeks would approve of OCaml. I
> just installed it and tried writing:
> 
>   let rec sum n =
>     if n < 1 then 0 else n + sum(n-1);;
> 
>   print_int(sum 1000000);;

let sum n =
	let rec aux n acc =
		if n < 1 then acc else aux (n-1) (acc+n)
	in aux n 0;;

print_int(sum 100);;

Note: native ints are native ints in Ocaml. For sum 1000000 you'll want
to use the bignum lib.

> and all I got was:
> 
>   Stack overflow during evaluation (looping recursion?).
> 
> So unless I've missed something, it doesn't seem to support tail-recursion,

Your function isn't tail-recursive (it needs the n when returning).

> in which case functional programmers aren't going to be happy at all...

Not only functional programmers are happy with ocaml :)

Regards,

-Martin