efficiency question

[Jorge Adriano]

On Monday 11 February 2002 02:10, Hal Daume III wrote:
> So instaed of storing 1 and 2 in the list, it stores pointers to
> them.  The reason it does this is so that it makes it easy to generate
> code for polymorhpic functions.  (,) being boxed means that instead of
> storing a pair of element, you're storing a pair of pointers.  That means
> you get worse performance because you have to chase more pointers.
>
> (at least that's my impression)
Thanks, I knew the concept but not the name.


On Sunday 10 February 2002 18:48, Kirsten Chevalier wrote:
> I'd guess that it's not just that you have to apply the (,) constructor --
> it also has to do with the fact that the tuples it's constructing here are
> boxed.
This brings another question to my mind, isn't it toupling a standard 
technique used in functional programming? I'm pretty sure I've seen it 
focused in some papers/text books.
I for one would not expect that folding the list twice would be more 
efficient...

J.A.