[Haskell-cafe] Re: sort and lazyness (?)

[Bayley, Alistair]

> 	> How does reverse work in constant space?  At the 
> moment I can't imagine
> 	> it doing so; that's why I tried it, but of course you 
> could be right.
> 	
> 	
> 	It allocates a new list cell for every cell it finds in 
> the input list.
> 	If the input list can be garbage collected then reverse 
> takes constant
> 	space because each time it inspects a list cell from 
> the input list that
> 	cell can be garbage collected. If the input list is 
> being retained for
> 	some other reason then reverse will take linear space.
> 
> 
> I don't think that's true.  It must inspect the whole input 
> list to give the first element of the output list, but it 
> cannot garbage collect the input list because it needs to 
> yield every element of it.

reverse creates the output list by pulling items from the head of the
input list, and prefixing them to the output list. After each item has
been pulled from the input, the list node can be GC'd from the input
list. Also, if the output list is itself being consumed by a function
which does not require the entire list (like length) then again the list
node can be GC'd soon after consumption.


> ghci>  length $ reverse [1..10^7] 

This is a compiler optimisation, I think, so will probably require ghc
-O(2?).

Alistair
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