[moron4hire]

How do you feel about having a different set of operators for integers and reals? Like "+." versus "+".

[enricosada]

F# use the same + operator

  > 1.0;;
  val it : float = 1.0

  > 1;;
  val it : int = 1

  > 3.0 + 1.0;;
  val it : float = 4.0

  > 3 + 1;;
  val it : int = 4

or strings

  > "3" + "4";;
  val it : string = "34"

implicit conversion is not supported (good ihmo)

  > 3.0 + 1;;

  3.0 + 1;;
  ------^

  stdin(5,7): error FS0001: The type 'int' does not match the type 'float'

[moron4hire]

I'd be fine with that. The OCaml way just seems needlessly preachy.

[pjmlp]

I don't have any issue with them.

My first contact with functional programming was with Caml Light back in 1996, OCaml's predecessor, which already has them.

My favourite programming languages are strong typed (e.g. Ada), so I guess it just felt natural back then.

However F# is the favourite one as nowadays I spend most of my time on Windows.

[FraaJad]

how to you feel about the overloaded use of `=` in C?

[moron4hire]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. `=` is only assignment in C (or Java, or C#, or most any language I know of). `==` is comparison, being a different operator, one wouldn't say `=` is "overloaded".

Two different operations, two different operators. Yes, C famously makes it easy to miss the extra `=` in if expressions, but that's C specifically, and it's not the fault of the operator, that's actually the fault of automatic conversions from int to bool. Static languages designed after I was born usually require boolean expressions in their `if` statements explicitly.

But `+` and `+.` are the same operation. Or are you saying that adding integers and adding reals are not the same operation, and thus warrant separate operators?

[gnuvince]

I've begun to like having '+' and '+.' operators in OCaml. Not that I'm never tripped up, I often am, but I can never hide implicit conversions.

Another thing to consider is how you would implement having '+' for both integers and floats. In a language like C, '+' is designed for its numerical types, but what if you want to use it for big ints? Or for vectors? In a language like C++ you can overload operators, in Haskell or Rust operators are part of a typeclass or trait respectively; you need to add extra features to the language and the code generated by '+' is no longer a simple iadd or dadd instruction.

OCaml's choice may not be the best one or the most popular one, but I think it works fine.

[tome]

Perhaps you know this, but just for the sake of precision and avoidance of doubt: Haskell numerical operations don't actually do any sort of conversion.