OCaml toplevel not interpreting comments

Question

$ ocaml
        Objective Caml version 3.12.1
  _________________________
[| +   | |   Batteries   - |
 |_____|_|_________________|
  _________________________
 | -  Type '#help;;' | | + |]
 |___________________|_|___|


Loading syntax extensions...
    Camlp4 Parsing version 3.12.1

# (* i am just a comment. nobody cares about me. oh wait! *);;
# Error: Parse error: illegal begin of top_phrase
#

I am getting this error

Error: Parse error: illegal begin of top_phrase

when I am try to enter a comment in the interpreter. Are comments not allowed in ocaml interpreter or am I doing something wrong?

If the `;;` was inside the comment block, the interpreter would expect input until terminated again with `;;`. — Animesh, Sep 27 '12 at 18:12

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 27 '12 at 17:52

5

I'd say you're entering nothing at all, which is a syntax error.

# (* Hello *) ;;
Error: Syntax error

Try entering something after the comment:

# (* Hello *) 3 ;;
- : int = 3

answered Sep 27 '12 at 17:52

Jeffrey Scofield

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Thanks, that makes sense. Even python and ruby didn't allow comments like this in their REPLs. Only Erlang and mono-csharp-shell allowed this. So I guess it is fair to not expect something like this. – Animesh Sep 27 '12 at 18:10

OCaml toplevel not interpreting comments

1 Answers1