In the second case, if your numerical data is just a big array, why not just mmap it? Unless you're running on a 32 bit machine, or have a *seriously* large amount of data, that seems like the easiest option. Although if you're talking about mutable data, that's a whole 'nother can of worms... but that's true even if your data fits into memory. You could look at Data.ByteString to get some idea as to how to wrap a pure interface around a disk-backed chunk of read-only memory. Or just read about the ffi, it's not too hard to figure out. David On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 01:27:03PM -0700, Carter T Schonwald wrote:
The main two use cases I have in mind are 1) really really really big abstract syntax trees or proof trees (a la compilers or theorem provers) 2) random access to numerical data
does that help clarify what i'm asking about? In each case, is there a standard way of dealing with this? in the case of (1) the sensible way seems to me to do some sort of zipper representation which loads adjacent nodes to some depth surrounding your current location in the tree, and in the case of (2) it seems like the sensible way would be load subsequences of the data into memory.