On 4/13/2016 6:13 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
Tarjan was among the first to study the problem:
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr06/cos423/Handouts/Amortized.pdf.
He assigned "computational credits" to functions and designed a type system in
which functions cannot consume more credits than assigned.
One simpler thing we can do is add an attribute:
void fun() @credits(2);
meaning fun() consumes two computational credits. Then a function that calls
fun() n times consumes n*2 credits etc. Generally we wouldn't aim for
automatically determining credits consumed, but we can define a library that
allows the user to declare credits appropriately.
This looks like it could be combined with Simen's @constanttime idea. After all,
a function would have to run in constant time in order for the credits to be
consistent.
Or maybe go one step further, and use @BigO(2) ? @BigO(2) would imply constant
time. This would fit in with your research on combining complexities.
