> Rust isn't really part of the family, but rather a distant cousin from another continent, which once played with ML and family during a summer vacation
It's actually more of a sibling in the family who ran away from home at the age of 6 and fell in with the crowd on the wrong side of the tracks.
Initially Rust was very much like ocaml. It isn't anymore :) Many of the normally-in-functional-languages features in Rust come from these days. Others were lost and re-added later. It's a very complex history.
> function head patterns like other languages in the ML family
could you elaborate? I'm not familiar with this feature (only have dabbled in sml).
> support for naturally writing recursive functions
It's actually more of a sibling in the family who ran away from home at the age of 6 and fell in with the crowd on the wrong side of the tracks.
Initially Rust was very much like ocaml. It isn't anymore :) Many of the normally-in-functional-languages features in Rust come from these days. Others were lost and re-added later. It's a very complex history.
> function head patterns like other languages in the ML family
could you elaborate? I'm not familiar with this feature (only have dabbled in sml).
> support for naturally writing recursive functions
yeah, I wish we had TCO.