Are constructors matched against using "switch" or chained if-else

[Clinton Mead]

Thanks David. Can I ask why? Is it because the first constructor is treated
specially? (perhaps because it has zeroed tag bits)? Or is it just because
there's always an if/else chain in order of the constructor definition
regardless of the order of the case statement so the higher up the list the
better?

On Wed, Feb 23, 2022 at 1:34 PM David Feuer <david.feuer at gmail.com> wrote:

> I can answer one of your questions for sure: the order of your case
> branches doesn't matter at all. However, the order of the data constructors
> in the type declaration does matter. Put your most likely one first.
>
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2022, 9:09 PM Clinton Mead <clintonmead at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi All
>>
>> I'm developing an unbounded integer type, which I won't go into the
>> details here but in some circumstances has better performance than the
>> standard "Integer".
>>
>> Anyway, whilst there are complex cases, the most common case is a
>> standard machine int multiplication.
>>
>> Hence I want the type to be optimised for that case.
>>
>> I'm going to have a few constructors, anyway, so I first considered
>> something like this:
>>
>> `data MyInt = BasicZero | BasicPos Word | BasicNeg Word | ComplexPosA ...
>> | ComplexNegA ... | ComplexPosB ... | ComplexNegB ...`
>>
>> I'd naturally make the "Word"s in "BasicPos" and "BasicNeg"
>> strict/unpack, hopefully eliminating the indirection, or perhaps just
>> making them primitive directly.
>>
>> This has 7 constructors, which quite nicely I believe fits into the three
>> spare bits in a 64 bit pointer which GHC optimises I believe.
>>
>> However, this approach I thought of because I assumed that GHC would do a
>> switch style statement on the constructors, so once I have more than one I
>> might as well have as many as I want (well, up to 7, until I lose the
>> optimisation).
>>
>> But if GHC compiles this to a "if ... else if..." chain, a better
>> representation is the following:
>>
>> `data MyInt = BasicInt Int | ComplexPosA ... | ComplexNegA ... |
>> ComplexPosB ... | ComplexNegB ...`
>>
>> That way I can match against BasicInt first, and knock that out of the
>> way as my "hot" case. However, using "Int" instead of "Word" does make the
>> logic a bit more complex, but it may be worth it if I'm reducing the number
>> of patterns I have to check against for all arguments.
>>
>> I was just wondering if anyone could share some insight on what GHC does
>> in these circumstances? For example, does the order I list my cases in a
>> case statement matter if they're non-overlapping? Will GHC match them in
>> the order I list, or will it just make them into a switch statement so it
>> doesn't matter if I reorder them?
>>
>> I guess I could benchmark all this (and probably will) but some insights
>> and general guidance would be good.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Clinton
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