IDisposable Thoughts

My good friend Daniel Chambers (@danielchmbrs) pointed out an error in my code for seq_append, and he was totally right! so I fixed it thanks to him, go and check it out, thanks buddy :)

Now, he mentioned something very important:

You should try to not make your functions partial (ie throw exceptions). Instead, use the Option type. So head is 'a list -> 'a option instead of 'a list -> 'a

In the standard Caml list module hd, tl and nth throw failure if the list is empty, but in the same module we have nth_opt returning the optional type instead.

Let’s talk a little more about option, it is defined like this:

type option 'a =
  | None
  | Some of 'a

Using this, implementing our seq_nth_opt is an easy job:

let rec seq_nth_opt n l =
  if n < 0 then None else
  match l with
    | End -> None
    | Next (x, tl) -> if n = 0 then (Some x) else seq_nth_opt (n - 1) tl
;;

seq_nth_opt 0 sample ;;
seq_nth_opt 10 sample

val seq_nth_opt : int -> 'a seq -> 'a option = <fun>
- : int option = Some 1
- : int option = None 

So, our friend Daniel is right, and I let you as an exercise to implement your own seq_hd_opt and seq_tl_opt.