Practical OCaml

Description

Objective Caml (OCaml) is an open source programming language that allows you to utilize both functional and object-oriented programming. Sporting features such as a robust object system, type safety, and an expansive standard library, OCaml is a language that encourages pragmatic solutions instead of dogmatic ones. Boasting performance on par with the likes of C/C++, and having compilers available for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X, enterprise developers should consider adding this powerful language to their repertoire.

Written for experienced programmers, Practical OCaml teaches OCaml in a code-intensive fashion. Readers are encouraged to follow along with most examples using the OCaml top-level (the interactive interpreter), giving them the opportunity to consider the purpose and syntax of each line. The author's considerable knowledge of the Java, Python, and C++ languages allows him to present the material at a level and perspective that readers hailing from varied programming backgrounds will appreciate.

Language aficionados will be sure to enjoy the occasional digression into tangential topics such as OCaml's impurities from the functional programming perspective, with thoughts about how to overcome them using mutability, references, and classes.

In later chapters, you'll put what you've learned to work, building applications capable of performing complex log-file processing, crawling the Web, filtering spam, and even broadcasting audio over a network using the Shoutcast protocol.

CONTENTS:

Contents at a Glance
About the Author
About the Technical Reviewer
Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1 Why Objective Caml (OCaml)?
CHAPTER 2 Interacting with OCaml: The Toplevel
CHAPTER 3 Syntax and Semantics
CHAPTER 4 Understanding Functions
CHAPTER 5 Practical: Creating a Simple Database
CHAPTER 6 Primitive and Composite Types
CHAPTER 7 Practical: Simple Database Reports, Exports, and Imports
CHAPTER 8 Collections
CHAPTER 9 Files and File I/O
CHAPTER 10 Exception Handling
CHAPTER 11 Practical: A URI Library
CHAPTER 12 Using Ocamldoc
CHAPTER 13 Modules and Functors
CHAPTER 14 Practical: A Spam Filter
CHAPTER 15 Practical: A Network-Aware Scoring Function
CHAPTER 16 Ocamllex and Ocamlyacc
CHAPTER 17 Practical: Complex Log File Parsing
CHAPTER 18 The Objective Part of Caml
CHAPTER 19 Digression: OCaml Is Not Pure
CHAPTER 20 Digression: Functional Programming
CHAPTER 21 Practical: Web Programming
CHAPTER 22 Practical: A Shoutcast Server
CHAPTER 23 Using Threads
CHAPTER 24 Practical: A Concurrent Web Crawler
CHAPTER 25 Interfacing with OCaml
CHAPTER 26 Practical: Time and Logging Libraries
CHAPTER 27 Processing Binary Files
CHAPTER 28 OCaml Development Tools
CHAPTER 29 Camlp4
CHAPTER 30 Conclusion

INDEX