There *is no* difference between the two if one views them as pure mathematical values. Questions of run time speed or memory usage, i.e. efficiency (which your original question was about) are clearly outside
Benjamin Fransen writes: the
realm of pure values, and thus we may perceive them as distinct in this wider setting.
My favourite analogy for this is the old joke about a topologist being a person who cannot see any difference between a cup and a doghnut.
The engineer's response, of course, at the thought of ignoring questions about run time speed and memory usage, is that a topologist is a person who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. (I was told this quote was actually from abstract algebraists, when confronted by the famous description of a topologist, but what the heck.) Dave Barton EDAptive Computing