[Haskell-cafe] hamming distance allocation

[Daniel Fischer]

Am Montag 19 April 2010 14:37:33 schrieb John Lato:
> Is it really necessary to use Strings?  I think a packed type, e.g.
> Vector or ByteString, would be much more efficient here.

Not very much if the strings are fairly short (and the list isn't too long, 
so there's not a big difference in cache-friendliness).
If eight-bit characters aren't enough, packing the strings into 
UArray Int Char gives performance quite close to ByteStrings.

> Of course this is only likely to be a benefit if you can move away from
> String entirely.
>
> I suspect that "hamming2" would perform better then.
>
> John