[m-rev.] for review: arrays and the debugger

[Zoltan Somogyi]

On 18-Jun-2001, Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> Suppose we decide to optimize deconstruct by providing an alternative
> version that returns an array rather than a list.  Then we'll have four
> different versions rather than two.  Next, remember that we have to
> implement these in several different languages, for the different
> back-ends (C, Java, and C# or Managed C++).  Pretty soon all these
> different versions start to add up.

If this ever becomes an issue, which I doubt will happen in the near future,
we can go back and implement limited_deconstruct as an arity test and then
a deconstruct, just as you suggest.

> It's not a matter of preventing optimizations, it's just a matter of
> making them more difficult by sheerly by virtue of the number of lines of
> source code that need to be understood and/or modified in order to
> optimize things.

The amount of effort expended on this email exchange vastly dwarfs the amount
of effort required to understand and/or modify the mechanism I implemented.

Are you arguing against the addition of a limited_deconstruct predicate to
std_util or not? If yes, what is your argument? If not, do you have a reason
why I shouldn't commit a working, efficient and reasonably simple
implementation that amounts to more than "I don't like it"?

Zoltan.
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