On Wednesday 15 October 2008 10:48:26 you wrote:
Strictness does not imply unboxing.
To see why not, think about the fact that unboxing breaks sharing. By keeping the pointer-indirection in place, we can share even strict fields between related values.
I believe I realize that. What I was wondering about was the fact that it seemed to think the pointer might be to a thunk (instead of constructor closure). Doesn't the strictness flag mean the following assembler would work sni_info: movq 7(%rbx),%rbx movq $snj_info,(%rbp) jmp snj_info (which could be cleaned up further by combining it with snj_info) instead of sni_info: movq 7(%rbx),%rbx movq $snj_info,(%rbp) testq $7,%rbx jne snj_info jmp *(%rbx) (i.e., the whole test if it is a thunk and conditionally evaluate it bit is unnecessary due to constructor the strictness flag). Cheers! -Tyson