Why are strings linked lists?

[sebc at macs.hw.ac.uk]

On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 12:37:30PM +0100, Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:
> >
> > So, what is happening that there is 1 cell in the heap
> > containing the representation of 'a', and then a linked list
> > of length 5000000, where each element points to that cell.
> 
> Yes, you're right. But if you choose the array alternative, you cannot use 
> sharing and would, therefore, still need 20 MB.

You can use sharing if you don't use unboxed arrays.  Not that it
matters if a character takes as much space as a pointer, but for
64-bits floating point numbers on a platform with 32-bits pointers, it
would decrease memory consumption by almost half.
Anyway, I'm just nitpicking. :-)

-- 
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