In OCaml, it is possible to define explicit polymorphic type in a record
type foo = { f : 'a. unit -> 'a };;
It seems we can assign only general values to f like
{ f = fun () -> failwith ""; }
or
{ f = fun () -> exit 1; }
How to use this language feature in real world? Is there any good practical example?
This isn't really connected with records. If you declare any function to have type 'a. unit -> 'a (takes nothing and returns whatever the caller wanted) then you can only use it for functions that don't return.
Here's a slightly more useful example: a record containing a function for finding the length of lists (of any type).
# type foo = { f : 'a. 'a list -> int };;
type foo = { f : 'a. 'a list -> int; }
# let foo = { f = List.length };;
val foo : foo = {f = <fun>}
# foo.f [1;2;3];;
- : int = 3
It can be useful if you wanted to pass a function like List.length as an argument to another function, and have it use it on multiple types:
Say we want to pass List.length to test. We can't do it directly:
# let test fn = fn [1;2;3] + fn ["a";"b";"c"];;
Error: This expression has type string but an expression was expected of type
int
But we can use a record:
# let test foo = foo.f [1;2;3] + foo.f ["a";"b";"c"];;
val test : foo -> int = <fun>
# test foo;;
- : int = 6
