[Haskell-cafe] why is Prelude.^ so convoluted?

[Ronny Wichers Schreur]

Brandon Beck wrote:

> [..] I suspect the justification is because the version in the
> prelude is tail recursive while yours isn't. 

It also performs fewer negativity and zero tests and it builds
fewer closures.

> So the tail recursive version should run a bit faster when n
> is large.

 From the intro of the Haskell'98 prelude
<http://www.haskell.org/onlinereport/standard-prelude.html>:

    "It constitutes a specification for the Prelude. Many of the
     definitions are written with clarity rather than efficiency
     in mind"

The power function is not an example of this.


Cheers,

Ronny Wichers Schreur