Printing arbitrary data in OCaml?

Learning
1

For OCaml, is there a way to print arbitrary data, or do I need to write a custom printer for every object?

In Rust, I can do something like

#[derive(Deubg)]
struct ...

and then it will auto derive a way to print the data for me.

In Clojure, most objects can be printed as is.

In OCaml, is there a way to print objects without writing a custom printer function?

2

There exist some deriving mechanisms in OCaml quite similar to those you know in Rust (or Haskell): they are implemented by PPX syntax extensions, namely ppxlib or ppx_deriving. With such extensions, you may write for instance:

type example = A | B [@@deriving show]

and two functions pp_example : Formatter.formatter -> example -> unit and show_example : example -> string will be automatically generated next to the type declaration. (show comes as a standard plugin with ppx_deriving; if you prefer to use ppxlib, you will need an additional plugin for show: you may use my ppx_show plugin.)

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3

You may have seen “genprint” announced just today; it’s also a way to print arbitrary values, via a different pathway.