[Haskell-cafe] built-in lists vs inductively defined list

Hi, Can someone tell me if would be any difference (beside syntax) between the built-in Haskell list with [] and : and lists given by a inductive datatype definition like data List a = Nil | Cons a (List a) This is, is any of the compilers doing some special optimizations for the built-in lists? Best Miguel Vilaça