OCaml training

OCaml training

John Else

john.else@citrix.com

johnelse.github.io/ocaml-training

OCaml Features

• Static type system
• Type inference
• Pattern matching
• Expressive type definitions
• First-class functions

Tools - OPAM

• Source-based package manager
• git/http backends
• Easy to create repos for testing and installing your own packages
• Easy to try out new compilers

opam.ocaml.org

Tools - utop

• User-friendly REPL
• Tab-completion
• readline support
• Much more user-friendly than the standard OCaml toplevel!

opam install utop

github.com/diml/utop

Tools - IOCaml

• OCaml mode for IPython
• REPL in a web browser, with embedded markdown
• Used to display the code samples in this presentation

opam install iocaml

github.com/andrewray/iocaml

Tools - Merlin

• Code completion and type lookup engine
• Plugins for vim, emacs

opam install merlin

github.com/the-lambda-church/merlin

emacs installation instructions

vim installation instructions

Another vim guide

Libraries - Unix

Functions for handling:

• Files
• Pipes
• Sockets (unix/network)
• Processes
• etc...

INRIA docs

Sockets examples

Libraries - Sys

• Access to command-line arguments
• Signal handling
• Filesystem operations

INRIA docs

Libraries - stdext

Citrix's extensions to the OCaml standard library

• Stringext, Listext, Unixext, etc...
• We'd like to deprecate it eventually, but it's used all over our legacy code.

Github link

Libraries - rpclib

• Create RPC marshalling functions from types
• Create RPC client and server modules from interfaces

github.com/samoht/ocaml-rpc

Further reading

• INRIA manual
• Real World OCaml
• Unix system programming in OCaml

Help?!

• irc.freenode.com - #ring3 (private), #ocaml
• caml-list