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8.1 Recursive definitions of values

(Introduced in Objective Caml 1.00)

As mentioned in section ‍7.7.2, the let rec binding construct, in addition to the definition of recursive functions, also supports a certain class of recursive definitions of non-functional values, such as

let rec name1 = 1 ::name2 andname2 = 2 ::name1 inexpr

which binds name1 to the cyclic list 1::2::1::2::…, and name2 to the cyclic list 2::1::2::1::…Informally, the class of accepted definitions consists of those definitions where the defined names occur only inside function bodies or as argument to a data constructor.

More precisely, consider the expression:

let rec name1 =expr1 andandnamen =exprn inexpr

It will be accepted if each one of expr1 …  exprn is statically constructive with respect to name1 …  namen, is not immediately linked to any of name1 …  namen, and is not an array constructor whose arguments have abstract type.

An expression e is said to be statically constructive with respect to the variables name1 …  namen if at least one of the following conditions is true:

An expression e is said to be immediately linked to the variable name in the following cases:


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