On Thu, 2006-10-19 at 21:10 +0400, Bulat Ziganshin wrote:
btw, writing this message i thought that -fconvert-strings-to-ByteStrings option will give a significant boost to many programs without rewriting them :)
This kind of data refinement has a side condition on the strictness of the function. You need to know that your list function is strict in the spine and elements before it can be swapped to a version that operates on packed strings. If it's merely strict in the spine then one could switch to lazy arrays. There's also the possibility to use lists that are strict in the elements. It'd be an interesting topic to research, to see if this strictness analysis and transformation could be done automatically, and indeed if it is properly meaning preserving. Duncan