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From: surendar@ENUXHA.EAS.ASU.EDU (Surendar Chandra)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.functional
Subject: Help needed with behaviour of SML
Keywords: SML, Variable redefinition
Message-ID: <9104262016.AA28063@enuxha.eas.asu.edu>
Date: 26 Apr 91 20:16:38 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: surendar@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (Surendar Chandra )
Organization: Arizona State Univ, Tempe AZ
Lines: 27

Hi,
	This is my first posting on this group. I do not even know if this
question is appropriate in this group. Anyway, I am currently implementing
a subset of the STandard ML as part of my course project and find the
behavior of SML quite confusing in the following case.

> val a = 1;
> a ;
| 1 : int ;
> fun b c = c * a ;
> b 2 ;
| 2 : int ;
> val a = 3;
> b 2 ;
| 2 : int ;
^^^^^^^^^^ Why does it do it like this.. Why doesn't it look up at the current
value of the variable 'a'. Why does it store the current value of 'a' in the
function during compilation itself? WHat is the logic behind this? I could
not lay my hands on a good reference for SML and most of the books don't seem
to talk about this at all.

Thanks in advance for any help,
surendar 

============================================================================
Surendar Chandra				602-894-2614
surendar@enuxva.eas.asu.edu