-------------------------
What is Missinglib?
-------------------------

It's a collection of OCaml-related utilities.  The following modules are
are provided:

AnyDBM                  Generic interface for on-disk storage of
                        key/value data

AnyDBM_String           AnyDBM module for simple CSV-style storage

Compose                 Utilities for chaining functions together

Composeoper             Haskell-like operators for chaining functions

ConfigParser            System for parsing configuration files
                        These configuration files can have multiple
                        sections and resemble .INI files.  This module
                        is designed to be mostly compatible with
                        Python's ConfigParser module.

Fileutil                File-related utilities
                       
Hashtbloper             Hash table convenience operators

Hashtblutil             Hash table utilities

Lexingutil              Lexing-related utilities

Listutil                List-manipulation utilities
                        Functions are provided to help extract
                        portions of lists and be more convenient
                        for association lists.  Also, lists of strings
                        or chars can be written directly to output channels.
                        
Slice                   Underlying API for Slice operators

Sliceoper               Flexible subparts of arrays, lists, and strings

Streamutil              Stream parser, conversion, and creation utilities
                        Provides features to create streams the yield
                        the lines of an input channel, the blocks of an
                        input channel, convert finite
                        streams to lists, map and filter streams
                        (similar to those functions on lists), and
                        fold streams.
                        
Strutil                 String-related utilities
                        Includes functions to strip whitespace from
                        the beginning or end of strings, to split
                        strings into lists by whitespace or a custom
                        delimeter, etc.

Unixutil                Operating system utilities
                        Includes functions to process directories
                        (possibly recursively), test for file
                        existence, and an implementation of "rm"
                        with "-r" and "-f" options.

The entire library has no prerequisites save the OCaml standard library and
findlib and is designed to install without complexity on a variety of
systems.  It could also easily be embedded within your own source trees
so that users need not have it installed beforehand.

** THIS IS CURRENTLY ALPHA-QUALITY CODE; MAJOR API FLUCTUATIONS MAY YET OCCUR.

-------------------------
Quick Start
-------------------------

1. Make sure you have OCaml 3.07 or above and findlib 0.3.1 or above
   installed.  You can obtain findlib from 
   http://www.ocaml-programming.de/packages/

2. Run "make"

3. Optional: "make test"

4. As root: "make install"

-------------------------
Usage in programs
-------------------------

You can compile your .ml files to .cmo with this:

  ocamlfind ocamlc -package missinglib -c test.ml

  or:

  ocamlfind ocamlopt -package missinglib -c test.ml

Then, you can link them with:

   ocamlfind ocamlc -package missinglib -linkpkg -o test test.cmo

   or:

   ocamlfind ocamlopt -package missinglib -linkpkg -o test test.cmx

If you prefer to compile and link all at once, use:

   ocamlfind ocamlc -package missinglib -linkpkg -o test test.ml

   or

   ocamlfind ocamlopt -package missinglib -linkpkg -o test test.ml

In the OCaml top-level interpreter "ocaml", you can use:

   #use "topfind";;
   #require "missinglib";;

   Then continue like normal.

-------------------------
Documentation
-------------------------

You can generate it in HTML with:

  cd libsrc; make htdoc

You could instead build the PDF version with:

  cd libsrc; make pdfdoc

Also available online at the package's homepage (see below)

-------------------------
Author & Homepage
-------------------------

Missinglib was written by John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>.

The latest version may be obtained at:

   gopher://quux.org/1/devel/missinglib

or:

   http://quux.org/devel/missinglib

Documentation is also available on that page.

This program is copyrighted under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
See the COPYRIGHT and COPYING files for more details.

If the GPL is unacceptable for your uses, please e-mail me; alternative
terms can be negotiated for your project.

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