added Bat{List|Array}.shuffle

[UnixJunkie]

No description provided.

[gasche]

You should try to install the resulting version of Batteries and load it from a toplevel to run one of the new functions. I suspect that you need to add the new file to the .mllib (and maybe some other place?) for this to work.

(You can update pull-requests by just doing git push --force towards you personal github clone of the repository, no strong need to close a PR to open a new one.)

[UnixJunkie]

I am testing it; I think the experience in the toplevel is not what people want.

[gasche]

(The failure model I had in mind was not toplevel-specific: if I remember correctly from my own BatConcreteQueue mistakes, compiling a program using Batteries fails at link-time if the mllib is not complete.)

[UnixJunkie]

I changed the semantic and ocamldoc strings.
Please have a look before accepting (eventually).

[gasche]

I am not convinced by the change: why change away from optional arguments again, is there a good reason for this?

I think the change you want to make is just turning

?(s = Random.get_state ()) ... ->

into

?s ... ->
let s = match s with
| Some s -> s
| None -> Random.get_state ()
in

Edit: I thought the issue was that the default value would not be evaluated on each function call, but in fact it does. So the recommendation in this message is useless as the two programs are equivalent.

[UnixJunkie]

In case no random state was provided, several successive calls to shuffle should move the global
random state forward.
In case a random state was provided, it is moved forward but not given back to the caller, which might be a problem.
I don't know how to detect with an optional argument that the argument was not passed; hence I reverted back to an option type.

[UnixJunkie]

What I describe is also the behavior I observed in Core.List.permute.

[UnixJunkie]

other proposal there: #720

[UnixJunkie]

done by 3c3bc7d