On Tue, 24 May 2011 10:42:34 +0200, Johan Tibell wrote:
Hi Daniel,
On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 10:07 AM, Daniel Díaz
<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi, cafe,
I just feel curiosity. In the bytestring package, Data.ByteString
module,
functions like length, index, and others with Int in its type
signature,
have Int64 in the analogous Data.ByteString.Lazy version. What is
the
reason?
A strict ByteString is one contiguous chunk of memory so it cannot be
longer than an Int (if we assume and Int is either 32 or 64 bits for
a
second). However, a lazily generated stream can be much bigger than
main memory, so it makes sense to use a bigger type to refer to e.g.
it length. Now, you might say that lazy ByteString should use Integer
instead of Int64. However, Int64 performs much better so I think the
loss of generality is worth it.
Johan
Thanks, it makes sense.
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