package base

  1. Overview
  2. Docs
package base
Legend:
Library
Module
Module type
Parameter
Class
Class type

Cross-platform system configuration values.

val argv : string array

The command line arguments given to the process. The first element is the command name used to invoke the program. The following elements are the command-line arguments given to the program.

val interactive : bool ref

interactive is set to true when being executed in the ocaml REPL, and false otherwise.

val os_type : string

os_type describes the operating system that the OCaml program is running on. Its value is one of "Unix", "Win32", or "Cygwin".

val unix : bool

unix is true if os_type = "Unix".

val win32 : bool

win32 is true if os_type = "Win32".

val cygwin : bool

cygwin is true if os_type = "Cygwin".

type backend_type = Caml.Sys.backend_type =
  1. | Native
  2. | Bytecode
  3. | Other of string

Currently, the official distribution only supports Native and Bytecode, but it can be other backends with alternative compilers, for example, JavaScript.

val backend_type : backend_type

Backend type currently executing the OCaml program.

val word_size_in_bits : int

word_size_in_bits is the number of bits in one word on the machine currently executing the OCaml program. Generally speaking it will be either 32 or 64.

val int_size_in_bits : int

int_size_in_bits is the number of bits in the int type. Generally, on 32-bit platforms, its value will be 31, and on 64 bit platforms its value will be 63. When running in JavaScript, it will be 32.

val big_endian : bool

big_endian is true when the program is running on a big-endian architecture.

val max_string_length : int

max_string_length is the maximum allowed length of a string or Bytes.t.

val max_array_length : int

max_array_length is the maximum allowed length of an 'a array.

val runtime_variant : unit -> string

Returns the name of the runtime variant the program is running on. This is normally the argument given to -runtime-variant at compile time, but for byte-code it can be changed after compilation.

val runtime_parameters : unit -> string

Returns the value of the runtime parameters, in the same format as the contents of the OCAMLRUNPARAM environment variable.

val ocaml_version : string

ocaml_version is the OCaml version with which the program was compiled. It is a string of the form "major.minor[.patchlevel][+additional-info]", where major, minor, and patchlevel are integers, and additional-info is an arbitrary string. The [.patchlevel] and [+additional-info] parts may be absent.

val enable_runtime_warnings : bool -> unit

Controls whether the OCaml runtime system can emit warnings on stderr. Currently, the only supported warning is triggered when a channel created by open_* functions is finalized without being closed. Runtime warnings are enabled by default.

val runtime_warnings_enabled : unit -> bool

Returns whether runtime warnings are currently enabled.

val opaque_identity : 'a -> 'a

For the purposes of optimization, opaque_identity behaves like an unknown (and thus possibly side-effecting) function. At runtime, opaque_identity disappears altogether. A typical use of this function is to prevent pure computations from being optimized away in benchmarking loops. For example:

for _round = 1 to 100_000 do
  ignore (Sys.opaque_identity (my_pure_computation ()))
done