integer-simple by default

[Isaac Dupree]

On 02/21/10 14:18, Daniel Fischer wrote:
> Am Sonntag 21 Februar 2010 19:56:54 schrieb Isaac Dupree:
>> We could try to find out how large Integers get, in practice, in
>> existing Haskell code (this may be difficult to find out).

I suspect (just guessing...) that a more reliable way to find out is to 
instrument integer-simple to report the sizes of integers it handles. 
For example, if you use Rational, (even toRational/fromRational), you 
might be handling Integers somewhat larger than you thought you were. 
And this could also report on how often the integers get that large.

(Also it's probably only tough operations like multiplication and 
division that we need to worry about for large numbers.  It's easy to 
get linear-time addition, etc.

Incidentally, for operations like Large Number plus or minus Small 
Number, it's possible to use a representation that has laziness and 
sharing to achieve amortized O(min(m,n)) time.  Which is a nice 
property... which I believe I implemented in HIntegerByInt... but there 
are probably disadvantages to doing it this way too.)

-Isaac