Are there common techniques or idioms for achieving structural sharing when composing data where equivalences exist?
(My motivation is to reduce heap usage for a particular problem I'm working on that involves a lot of repeated data.) As a specific example, consider sharing equivalent map values: (def m1 {:a [1 2]}) (def m2 (assoc m1 :b [1 2])) (identical? (m2 :a) (m2 :b)) ;; => false For this simple example, I can force sharing by introducing a variant of assoc which looks at existing values: (defn assoc-id [map key val] (assoc map key (get (apply hash-set (vals map)) val val))) And using it results in a map with two identical values: (def m3 (assoc-id m1 :b [1 2])) (identical? (m3 :a) (m3 :b)) ;; => true But, of course, this approach could get to be expensive and/or unwieldy if not done carefully. So, I was wondering if there are general techniques in this area. I'm sure I'm not the first to come across it. We already get this automatically for boxing of small integers: (identical? 5 5) ;; => true (identical? 500 500) ;; => false So I suppose I'm essentially looking for the same idea but for larger non-primitive "values". -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.