Syndicated from http://blogs.msdn.com/dsyme/archive/2006/09/06/DraftChapter2.aspx
[ Editors Note: there are a couple of minor issues that readers have spotted with the draft chapter
- When using the F# Interactive console window with F# 1.1.12 you MUST currently place ";;" on a SEPARATE line, and not at the end of the line as shown in the book. When using it with Visual Studio you don't need the ";;" at all.
- F# Interactive does not print all values in exactly the same way as shown in the book ]
I'm very glad to announce the availability of an early draft of Chapter 2 of a book on F# which I'm currently in the process of co-authoring. The projected title of the book is, unabashedly, "Expert F#". This is one of two F# books planned for publication by Apress in 2007 (having seen early drafts I can say the other one will also be great!)
The chapter covers most of the language constructs in tutorial mode, with the exception of object oriented programming, which will be covered in Chapter 3. (I hope to make a draft of Chapter 3 available fairly soon - if you'd like a very early draft then please contact me directly! )
I trust you will find this a useful resource for learning F# - it has been favourably received by people at MSR Cambridge. We'll update the draft for minor fixes, though of course the final version will be available in the book.
This is only a draft that has not undergone formal technical or copy editing, so please just ignore egregious mistakes and be patient with poor formatting and dangling symbolic cross-references (for various reasons Apress do not use Word cross-referencing and prefer to do it later in the production process). Also some Apress fonts may be used, though I have attempted to replace these in the copy circulated here.
Finally, some Word comments indicate where discrepencies exist with the current F# release.