Re: [Caml-list] exn vs option

[Raphael Proust <raphlalou@gmail.com>]

Aside from performance considerations, there are semantics differences
to take into account. This blog post explain why exceptions are
"better" (or, more precisely, why it is not generally a good idea to
replace exceptions by options)
http://blog.dbpatterson.com/post/9528836599 (it is in Haskell rather
than OCaml, but it still applies).

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 10:25 PM, Pierre Chopin <pierre@punchup.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I benchmarked two programs, in one case the main function throw an exception
> that is caught, in the other the function returns an option that is pattern
> matched on.
>
> I noticed that, whether the exception is thrown or not, the option version
> is always faster.
>
> Is there any case where it makes sense, performance wise, to use exception
> instead of 'a option ?
>
> test1.ml
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> exception Foo
> let f x =
>  if x =1 then raise Foo else ()
>
> ;;
>
>  for i = 0 to 10_000_000 do
> try
>     f 1
> with Foo -> ()
> done
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> test2.ml:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> let f x =
>     if x=1 then None else Some ()
>
> ;;
> for i = 0 to 10_000_000 do
>     match f 1 with
>         None -> ()
>     |   Some s -> s
>     done
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> --
> Pierre Chopin,
> Chief Technology Officer and co-founder
> punchup LLC
> pierre@punchup.com
>



-- 
_______
Raphael