WarnUnusedAnomalies - MLton Standard ML Compiler (SML Compiler)

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The `warnUnused` MLBasis annotation can be used to report unused identifiers. This can be useful for catching bugs and for code maintenance (e.g., eliminating dead code). However, the `warnUnused` annotation can sometimes behave in counter-intuitive ways. This page gives some of the anomalies that have been reported.

- Functions whose only uses are recursive uses within their bodies are not warned as unused:

      local
      fun foo () = foo () : unit
      val bar = let fun baz () = baz () : unit in baz end
      in
      end

      Warning: z.sml 3.5.
        Unused variable: bar.

- Components of actual functor argument that are necessary to match the functor argument signature but are unused in the body of the functor are warned as unused:

      functor Warning (type t val x : t) = struct
         val y = x
      end
      structure X = Warning (type t = int val x = 1)

      Warning: z.sml 4.29.
        Unused type: t.

- No component of a functor result is warned as unused. In the following, the only uses of `f2` are to match the functor argument signatures of `functor G` and `functor H` and there are no uses of `z`:

      functor F(structure X : sig type t end) = struct
         type t = X.t
         fun f1 (_ : X.t) = ()
         fun f2 (_ : X.t) = ()
         val z = ()
      end
      functor G(structure Y : sig
                                 type t
                                 val f1 : t -> unit
                                 val f2 : t -> unit
                                 val z : unit
                              end) = struct
         fun g (x : Y.t) = Y.f1 x
      end
      functor H(structure Y : sig
                                 type t
                                 val f1 : t -> unit
                                 val f2 : t -> unit
                                 val z : unit
                              end) = struct
         fun h (x : Y.t) = Y.f1 x
      end
      functor Z() = struct
         structure S = F(structure X = struct type t = unit end)
         structure SG = G(structure Y = S)
         structure SH = H(structure Y = S)
      end
      structure U = Z()
      val _ = U.SG.g ()
      val _ = U.SH.h ()

Last edited on 2007-11-01 18:32:19 by MatthewFluet.