[Haskell-cafe] Re: does the compiler optimize repeated calls?

[Sebastian Sylvan]

On 9/6/06, Alex Queiroz <asandroq at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hallo,
>
> On 9/6/06, Lennart Augustsson <lennart at augustsson.net> wrote:
> > Furthermore, doing that optimization (common subexpression
> > elimination) can lead to space leaks.  So you should not count on the
> > compiler doing it.  Besides, I often find it more readable and less
> > error prone to name a common subexpression; only one place to change
> > when you need to change the call.
> >
>
>      So there is no benefits from the "functions have no side-effects"
> property, performance-wise. Pity.
>

I think most compilers actually do CSE (to varying extents), but it's
not a good idea to rely on it since nobody will ever *guarantee* that
it's done.

Purely functional does give you some performance benefits, though.
Such as getting pass-by-reference performance "for free" (i.e. without
actually having to worry about pass-by-reference semantics -- send a
huge data structure "by value" to a function and it will really only
be a pointer that gets sent). You can also do parallel and other
multithreading stuff much easier which should surely count as a major
performance benefit.

/S
-- 
Sebastian Sylvan
+46(0)736-818655
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