08:29 <mqbs> hello

08:30 <mqbs> today's my first day o'camling, so excuse this question if it seems niave: I'm writing a function to bring x to the y power, and I want to use recursion, but how do I make it stop doing (x *. x) when it hits (y - 1) times without a for loop?

08:39 <mqbs> oh shit ** is expoential function isnt it?

08:39 <mqbs> fack

10:13 <gl> let rec pow x = function y when y > 0 -> x *. pow x (y-1) | _ -> 1.0

10:13 <gl> mqbs

17:28 <mqbs> thank you gl

17:36 <mqbs> gl: I think I understand this snippet, only I'm wondering why it takes two values when 'let rec pow x' only has one... does the 'function y' part of it enable it to take more values? also, is a value such as y always mutable without a flag when it is a function within a function?

18:05 <gl> mqbs: 'pow' takes 2 arguments.. let rec pow x = function y ... say that i match the second (function y -> blah | _ -> blablah)

18:06 <gl> mqbs: i could write it: let rec pow x y = if y < 1 then 1.0 else x *. pow x (y-1)

18:07 <gl> in fact, "let f x1 x2 ... xN = expr" is equivalent to "let f = function x1 -> function x2 -> ... -> function xN -> expr"