We will be using OIT's hats/arizona machines for this course.

To begin, ssh to arizona.princeton.edu or hats.princeton.edu. Assuming you are using tcsh/csh, you need to add the following line to your ~/.cshrc file in order to add SML to your path.

Once you have done this, issue the command source ~/.cshrc to reload your .cshrc file, and then run sml to begin interacting with SML.

If you would like to install SML on your own machines, you can download it from SMLNJ.org. If you are using Windows or Linux, use the current version 110.0.7. If you're running Mac OS X, you'll have to try a working version.

The SML command prompt is a dash. Terminate commands with a semicolon. Assuming your expression is well-typed, SML will respond with val it = v:t, where v is the resulting value and t is the type of that value. You can then use the variable it in the next input. To exit SML, close the input using the standard EOF character, Control-D.

	willy% sml
	Standard ML of New Jersey, Version 110.0.7, September 28, 2000 [CM; autoload enabled]
	- 3+4;
	val it = 7 : int
	- it - 5; 
	val it = 2 : int
	- let val x = 3 in it + x end;
	val it = 5 : int
			

Type use "file.sml"; at the command prompt to load code from a file. SML will then try to locate that file in the current directory. OS.FileSys.getDir(); shows you the current directory. OS.FileSys.chDir("../where/ever/"); changes the current directory.

It may be helpful to use an editor with syntax highlighting for SML. We recommend using emacs since there is a package called sml mode, with documentation available.

To use sml mode on the department machines, put this .emacs file in your home directory.

The following details the way that I like to use sml and emacs. Feel free to ignore it, but it's a good place to start if you're completely confused.

If you've got an Xserver such as Exceed running, type emacs foo.sml &. If not, you can do emacs -nw foo.sml. (In this case, you'll get grayscale syntax highlighting.)

Assuming you are using the provided .emacs file, emacs will realize from the file extension that you are writing sml code and automatically put you into sml mode. You'll see (SML) on the dark bar near the bottom of the window. You'll also get an SML menu on the top bar.

Emacs has slightly odd notions of windows. A emacs frame is basically what you usually think of as a window. You can divide a frame into multiple windows (just like splitting the screen in most editors). A buffer is an open file or some other process (such as the SML buffer or the default scratch buffer). So for example, you can have one frame split into two windows, while having three files open, two of which are visible at the moment.

I use the following keyboard shortcuts to set up my workspace the way I like it. (The same options should be available in the menus somewhere.) C-x means hit Control and x at the same time. M-xmeans hit Alt or Esc and x. (Note that if you're using an Xserver, you may have to set it up to forward Alt to X.) C-x b means hit Control and x at the same time and then hit b.

• C-x 2 divides the frame horizontally into two windows.
• C-x o moves you to the other window.
• M-x sml enter starts SML in the background.
• C-x b *sml* enter switches buffers and moves SML into the lower window.
• C-x o moves you back to the top window.
• C-c C-b loads the current buffer into SML and the results will be displayed in the SML process in the bottom window.

If emacs gets confused while you are entering a command, hitting C-g a few time usually sorts things out. If you're typing words (like a file name or buffer name), you can use tab-completion.

Here are a few more useful emacs commands.

Some of the later assignments will use SML's compilation manager to compile larger projects. All the files you want to compile should be listed in a file called sources.cm. Path names in sources.cm are relative. (sources.cm will be provided for you with the code for each assigment.)

To compile code with the compilation manager, first make sure SML is in the directory where sources.cm is located. Use OS.FileSys.getDir(); to see the current directory and OS.FileSys.chDir("../where/ever/"); to change the current directory the current directory.

Once the directory is correct, type CM.make(); and SML will compile all the files listed in sources.cm. If you see val it= () : unit; at the end, then your files all compiled correctly. Otherwise there will be error messages.

If you get hash marks when printing out values, try changing the printLength and printDepth:

                        - int2nat(5); 
                        val it = succ (succ (succ (succ (succ #)))) : nat 
                        - Compiler.Control.Print.printLength := 1000; 
                        val it = () : unit 
                        - Compiler.Control.Print.printDepth := 1000; 
                        val it = () : unit 
                        - int2nat(5);           
                        val it = succ (succ (succ (succ (succ zero)))) : nat