Gmap - heterogenous maps over a GADT
%%VERSION%%
Gmap exposes the functor Make which takes a key type (a
GADT 'a key)
and outputs a type-safe Map where each 'a key is associated with a 'a value.
This removes the need for additional packing. It uses OCaml's stdlib
Map data
structure.
type _ key =
| I : int key
| S : string key
module K = struct
type 'a t = 'a key
let compare : type a b. a t -> b t -> (a, b) Gmap.Order.t = fun t t' ->
let open Gmap.Order in
match t, t' with
| I, I -> Eq | I, _ -> Lt | _, I -> Gt
| S, S -> Eq
end
module M = Gmap.Make(K)
let () =
let m = M.empty in
...
match M.find I m with
| Some x -> Printf.printf "got %d\n" x
| None -> Printf.printf "found nothing\n"This is already an exhaustive pattern match: there is no need for another case
(for the constructor S) since the type system knows that looking for I will
result in an int.
Motivation came from parsing of protocols which usually specify optional values and extensions via a tag-length-value (TLV) mechanism: for a given tag the structure of value is different - see for example IP options, TCP options, DNS resource records, TLS hello extensions, etc.
Discussing this problem with Justus Matthiesen during summer 2017, we came up with this design. Its main difference to Daniel C. Bünzli's hmap is that in gmap the key-value GADT type must be provided when instantiating the functor. In hmap, keys are created dynamically.
Documentation
API documentation is available online.
Installation
You need opam installed on your system. The command
opam install gmap
will install this library.