bignums, gmp, bytestring, .. ?

[Donald Bruce Stewart]

claus.reinke:
> it seems that haskell versions of bignums is pretty much gone from 
> more recent discussions of gmp replacements. now, I assume that
> there are lots of optimizations that keep gmp popular that one wouldn't
> want to have to reproduce, so that a haskell variant might not be
> competitive even if one had an efficient representation, but
> 
> - do all those who want to distribute binaries, but not dynamically
>    linked, need bignums?
> - it would be nice to know just how far off a good haskell version
>    would be performance-wise..
> - what would be a killer for numerical programming, might still be
>    quite acceptable for a substantial part of haskell uses?
> 
> of course, the real gmp replacement project might be going so well
> that a haskell version would be obsolete rather sooner than later, and
> i certainly don't want to interfere with that effort.
> 
> all that being said, it occurred to me that the representations and
> fusions described in the nice "rewriting haskell strings" paper would 
> be a good foundation for a haskell bignum project, wouldn't they?
> 
> http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/fps.html
> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/ReplacingGMPNotes
> 
> has anyone been looking into this option?

Interesting, what kind of operations can you imagine fusing?

> just another thought,
> claus
> 
> ps. while I'm at it: claiming that "array fusion .. has received 
>    comparatively little attention" sounds a bit dangerous to me,
>    and the references are all too limited - even if you meant 
>    "in the Haskell world" (and PADL is no Haskell event\emph{).,

Yes, clearly this is in reference to rewriting-based/combinator-based
deforestation. Space constraints meant we couldn't address imperative
loop fusion strategies in any depth.

Cheers,
  Don