Tuples

A tuple is another kind of type in OCaml that programmers can define. Like records, it is a composite of other types of data. But instead of naming the components, they are identified by position. Here are some examples of tuples:

(1,2,10)
1,2,10
(true, "Hello")
([1;2;3], (0.5,'X'))

A tuple with two components is called a pair. A tuple with three components is called a triple. Beyond that, we usually just use the word tuple instead of continuing a naming scheme based on numbers. Also, beyond that, it's arguably better to use records instead of tuples, because it becomes hard for a programmer to remember which component was supposed to represent what information.

Building of tuples is easy: just write the tuple, as above. Accessing again involves pattern matching, for example:

match (1,2,3) with
| (x,y,z) -> x+y+z

Syntax.

A tuple is written

(e1, e2, ..., en)

The parentheses are optional but might sometimes be necessary to ensure the compiler parses your code the way you intended. One place where it is somewhat idiomatic to omit them is in a match expression between the match and with keywords (and also in the patterns in the following branches).

Dynamic semantics.

• if for all i in 1..n it holds that ei ==> vi, then (e1, ..., en) ==> (v1, ..., vn).

Static semantics.

Tuple types are written using a new type constructor *, which is different than the multiplication operator. The type t1 * ... * tn is the type of tuples whose first component has type t1, ..., and nth component has type tn.

• if for all i in 1..n it holds that ei : ti, then (e1, ..., en) : t1 * ... * tn.

Pattern matching.

We add the following new pattern form to the list of legal patterns:

• (p1, ..., pn)

The parentheses are optional but might sometimes be necessary to ensure the compiler parses your code the way you intended.

And we extend the definition of when a pattern matches a value and produces a binding as follows:

• If for all i in 1..n, it holds that pi matches vi and produces bindings $b_i$, then the tuple pattern (p1, ..., pn) matches the tuple value (v1, ..., vn) and produces the set $\bigcup_i b_i$ of bindings. Note that the tuple value must have exactly the same number of components as the tuple pattern does.