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repeat                                                           (Lib)
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repeat : ('a -> 'a) -> 'a -> 'a

SYNOPSIS
Iteratively apply a function until it fails.

KEYWORDS
Iteration, application.

DESCRIBE
An invocation {repeat f x} expands to {repeat f (f x)}. Thus it unrolls to
{f(...(f x)...)}, returning the most recent argument to {f} before
application fails.

FAILURE
The evaluation of {repeat f x} fails only if interrupted, or machine
resources are exhausted.

EXAMPLE
The following gives a simple-minded way of calculating the largest integer
on the machine.

- fun incr x = x+1;
> val incr = fn : int -> int

val maxint = repeat incr 0;   (* takes some time *)
> val maxint = 1073741823 : int

(Caution: in some ML implementations, the type {int} is
not implemented by machine words, but by ‘bignum’ techniques that
allow numbers of arbitrary size, in which case the example above
will not return for a very long time.)

SEEALSO
Lib.funpow.

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