Faster Array#/MutableArray# copies

[Simon Marlow]

On 01/03/2011 11:55, Roman Leshchinskiy wrote:
> Simon Marlow wrote:
>>
>> For small arrays like this maybe we should have a new array type that
>> leaves out all the card-marking stuff too (or just use tuples, as Roman
>> suggested).
>
> Would it, in theory, be possible to have an "unpacked" array type? That
> is, could we have constructors for which the length of the closure is
> determined dynamically at runtime?

Certainly, but the amount of effort to implement depends on what you 
want to support. e.g. do you want to support {-# UNPACK #-} on primitive 
array types in a constructor field?  That's probably quite hard.  I 
believe Duncan Coutts has been thinking along similar lines, we talked 
about it once.

Or were you thinking of something more restricted?

Cheers,
	Simon