The value restriction

Question

In OCaml you can\'t generalize a partially-applied curried function (the \"value restriction\").

What is the purpose of the value restriction? What unpleasant would

Answer 1

Without the value restriction or other mechanisms to restrict generalization, this program would be accepted by the type system:

let r = (fun x -> ref x) [];; (* this is the line where the value restriction would trigger *)

> r : 'a list ref

r := [ 1 ];;

let cond = (!r = [ "foo" ]);;

The variable r would have type 'a list ref, meaning that its contents could be compared to [ "foo" ] although it contained a list of integers.

See Xavier Leroy's PhD thesis for more motivation (ref is not the only construct one may want to add to pure lambda-calculus that introduces the problem) and a survey of the systems that existed at the time of his thesis (including his).