[Haskell-beginners] Important coding guideline and library proposal

[Keith Sheppard]

... or just say that it's O(n) in the docs. And if n is infinity
you'll be waiting for a while.

(Sorry Stephen... meant that for the list)

On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 2:33 PM, Stephen Tetley
<stephen.tetley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Daniel
>
> Hmm, maybe the docs in Data.List should say that length is recursively
> calculated. I know you can view the source from Haddock, and its also
> obvious once you think of list as being defined by an algebriac type,
> but lists in other languages (read OO) often have track length as part
> of the ADT making it constant time to get hold of.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Stephen
>
>
> 2009/11/22 Daniel Fischer <daniel.is.fischer at web.de>:
>> Guideline:
>>
>> NEVER, *never ever*, use 'length' ***unless you really want to know the exact length of a
>> list***
>>
>> Proposal:
>> rename 'length' to 'yesIReallyWantToKnowTheExactLengthOfThisListSoPleaseCalculateItForMe'
>> to reduce performance bugs caused by naive uses of length.
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