Question 1

How do I migrate from the OCaml standard library to containers?

Accepted Answer

Start by replacing stdlib modules with CC-prefixed ones and consult the migration guides for version-specific changes, especially for monomorphic operators and function renames in 2.0 and 3.0.

Question 2

OCaml containers vs Core or Batteries: which should I use?

Accepted Answer

Containers is lighter and more modular, focusing on safe stdlib extensions with minimal dependencies, while Core and Batteries offer broader feature sets but with heavier footprints and different design philosophies.

Question 3

How to handle the monomorphic operators in containers?

Accepted Answer

Use Stdlib.(=) for polymorphic comparison when needed, or define explicit equal/compare functions for types. The README recommends exporting such functions for public types to ease future updates.

Question 4

What are the key breaking changes in containers 3.0?

Accepted Answer

Main changes include splitting containers-data into a separate package, removing deprecated functions, updating iterators to standard Seq.t, and renaming functions like CCVector.shrink to CCVector.truncate.

Question 5

How to install containers with opam?

Accepted Answer

Run 'opam install containers' for the core library, and 'opam install containers-data' for extra data structures. Ensure OCaml >= 4.03.0 is installed, as per the build requirements.

Question 6

Does containers support JSON serialization?

Accepted Answer

It includes bencode and CBOR codecs in sub-libraries, but for JSON, you'd need external libraries. S-expression serialization is built-in with CCSexp for flexible parsing and printing.

ocaml-containers

What is ocaml-containers?

Overview

Use Cases

Best For

Related Projects

Found a gem we're missing?

Not Ideal For

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

Frequently Asked Questions