Re: [oliver: Re: [Caml-list] Strings as arrays or lists...]

[Olivier Andrieu <andrieu@ijm.jussieu.fr>]

 Issac Trotts [Monday 3 March 2003] :
 > Char arrays take up four times as much space as strings, but there is a 
 > tradeoff
 > of space versus time.  The statement
 > 
 >   let a = Array.make 2000000 ' ';;
 > 
 > takes no noticable time, but
 >  
 >   let s = String.make 2000000 ' ';;
 > 
 > takes about 7 seconds to run on my computer.

Er ... what are you talking about ? If you're talking about the
toplevel, that's completely irrelevant because what takes time then is
merely the _printing_ of the value. Strings are printed entirely by
the toplevel (not very smart for long strings), whereas only the first
values of arrays are printed. 

String.make and Array.make still do the same thing : allocate some
space and fill it with an initial value. But array of chars take up
four times as much space and thus it usually takes longer to allocate
such a big array.

-- 
   Olivier

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