Question

I’m generally unsatisfied with writing code like this:

let load_record_field cursor gets geti gett a = function
  | 0x01 -> let c, s = gets () in (a.a_record_uuid <- s; `More_record c)
  | 0x02 -> let c, s = gets () in (a.a_group <- s; `More_record c)
  | 0x03 -> let c, s = gets () in (a.a_title <- s; `More_record c)
  | 0x04 -> let c, s = gets () in (a.a_username <- s; `More_record c)
  | 0x07 -> let c, t = gett () in (a.a_creation_time <- t; `More_record c)
  .
  .
  .
  | 0xFF -> `End_of_record cursor

I’ve minimized the boilerplate, but I was wondering if there was any OCaml magic that would let me completely eliminate it.

Answer 1

This is dead simple: just use a closure to do the setting, and write a function to abstract out the boilerplate

let load_record_field cursor gets geti gett a x =
  let frob get set =
     let (c,s) = get () in
     set s; `More_record c
  in
  function
  | 0x01 -> frob gets (fun s -> a.a_record_uuid <- s)
  | 0x02 -> frob gets (fun s -> a.a_group <- s)
  | 0x03 -> frob gett (fun s -> a.a_title <- s)
  ...

and so on.

You can make this even better if you use a macro package like Jane
Street’s fieldslib. That generates first-class fields, along with
automatically generated setters and getters. This would mean that you
wouldn’t have to construct the closure each time by hand.