On Saturday, September 13, 2014 03:52:11 PM Jake Bolewski wrote:
> One version of a function could handle all parametric expression types, it
> would just have to do runtime lookup similar to what you would have to do
> now,
> so isa(arg, Expr) && (arg::Expr).head === :headB would then just become
> isa(arg, Expr{:headB}).
But wouldn't a function like
function find_ref_expr(ex::Expr)
if ex.head == :ref
# found it!
else
for i = 1:length(ex.args)
find_ref_expr(ex.args[i])
end
end
end
end up being specialized for each different type of expression head? I'm not
saying that specialization would not ever be useful, but I do wonder about the
cost of compiling 20 different variants when all you care about might be a
single head type.
Anyway, just thought I'd raise one potential reason to perhaps contemplate
_not_ making a breaking change. In any case, it would probably good to try to
get a sense for what the performance tradeoff would be before tackling such a
project.
Best,
--Tim
