Neil Van Dyke <n...@neilvandyke.org> writes: > For new students, I would show them examples like Eli and Matthias > did. For production work, I usually build up strings using string > ports. > > Compared to various ways of building lists and doing "string-append", > or to simply doing lots of incremental "string-append" or "format", > using a string port usually permits more tail calls, and sometimes > reduces allocations or otherwise inefficient calls. (Note that I > assume that the string port implementation itself is very efficient > internally.)
Thanks, Neil. This goes a bit more to the core of my question. I have become used to thinking of string formatting, joining, and concatenation as "cheap" operations, and anything that looks like doing I/O as "expensive." But maybe that's not the right way to think about it, as your example shows. I shall do some incantations: "A string port is not a file..." Still, I am not currently in a position where performance matters that much, so I will stick with "format" and friends for now. It's nice to know that ports are the right thing to grow up into, though. Thanks! Richard _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
