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Comparing OCaml and Standard ML (2008)
This page compares point-by-point the Objective Caml (OCaml) and Standard ML (SML) programming languages, the two main representatives of the ML programming language family. The comparison includes language design and current tool availability, as well as further social factors.
Arrays and strings show up infrequently in traditional functional programming applications, and many new ML programmers accustomed to array-based work could quite profitably switch to datatype-based solutions instead. Format strings have proved to be a useful enough idiom that special language support is justified.It would go against the SML philosophy to include such a complicated type system feature that most parts of most programs wouldn't use. The Shootout only measures microbenchmarks, and MLton's whole-program optimization can be expected to produce a marked efficiency advantage over native OCaml programs for large projects that make good use of abstraction and modularity.
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