[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell vs OCaml

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

On Wed,  4 May 2005 03:02:58 -0400
ajb at spamcop.net wrote:

> Quoting Erik de Castro Lopo <hc-erikd at mega-nerd.com>:
> 
> > Yes, but only if your functions are impure.
> 
> Wrong.  An unevaluated thunk can, in general, be much larger than what
> the thunk evaluates to.  (Think of "length" of a large list, for example.)
> If such a thunk is unevaluated but not garbage for a considerable time,
> then you have a space leak.
> 
> So you do need to think about evaluation order.  One good rule of thumb
> is: On large data structures, try to have a single consumer only.

Ahh, OK. Thats a significantly non-trivial detail to have to 
think about :-).

Erik
-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
  Erik de Castro Lopo  nospam at mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"It's far too easy to make fun of Microsoft products, but it takes a
real man to make them work, and a god to make them do anything useful"
  -- Anonymous