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I'm curious about the bit on module systems; I've heard that the MLs have a more powerful system than most languages, but not having used them, I don't know what advantages it provides/what problems it solves. All the explanation of ML-style modules seems rather abstract, focused more on how they work rather than what they're useful for. Can anyone point to some good resources/explanations about what ML modules allow you to do that can't be easily done otherwise?

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This is probably not technically correct, but I tend to think of ML modules as being almost unrelated to modules in other languages. ML modules are closer to being compile-time records than the plain namespaces of almost every other language, with their own sub language for creating and transforming them. I'm not sure they're fully restricted to compile-time, either.

It may not be exactly what you're looking for, but "The History of Standard ML" published last year has a nice section on ML modules with design considerations.

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