Re: why are there [v e c t o r s] in Lisp?

[Emanuel Berg]

"Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com>
writes:

> As I said, you could write a compiler performing
> global analysis to determine how you use a given
> object in the data flow, and therefore store the
> literal as a list or as a vector.
>
> One complication would be I/O. The data flow
> analysis could let the compiler determine that some
> object read shall be stored as a vector or as list,
> but the reading function wouldn't know that from the
> external syntax, and it would need an additionnal
> type parameter.
>
> Notice that this introduces some kind of static
> typing which is rather contrary to the lisp spirit
> and makes thing so bad in serializing non-lisp
> like languages.
>
> At this point, the best you could do is to start
> writing your own compiler to implement this idea,
> and see whether it's a good idea or not.

I'm not suggesting anyone do this. It sounds to much
like the C preprocessor. The gain is diffuse from
where I sit.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573