computer language shootout

[Simon Marlow]

> So am I.  Have any haskell-performance gurus looked at any of=20
> the code?  Many of
> the slowest entries are written in a very elegant, high-level=20
> style that is
> probably also relatively slow.

I've looked at a few.  The most common factor in the worst performers
seems to be the performance of String-related operations.  I tried
converting a few to use PackedStrings but that didn't help much.  I
suspect our PackedString implementation could do with some tuning, and
we could gain considerable benefit from having an hGetLinePS function
(like hGetLine but gets a PackedString).

Cheers,
	Simon