> and both languages seem to be significantly slower than OCaml in string
> handling, at least as far as this site goes:
> 
> http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/
> 
> For the word count benchmark OCaml scores 0.1850 seconds, while GHC is a
> dismal last place at 105.2110 seconds!  Even the bytecode ocaml is an
> order of magnitude faster.  The word frequency benchmark also shows this
> kind of poor string handling performance for Haskell, with OCaml scoring
> 0.5669 seconds, while GHC scores a truly dismal 6.4540, more than an
> order of magnitude slower, and even the bytecode ocaml is faster at
> 4.2644 seconds.

I severely doubt that these times are representative - the shootout
doesn't claim to be serious or meaningful.  A factor of ten is
possible, but a factor of 1000 shows that something else is wrong.

But it's true that for text-handling performance in GHC you have to
use something other than list-of-Char; typically you use PackedString,
which is basically an array of bytes.  The boxing and unboxing
certainly has significant cost.

Note that GHC characters are Unicode, and stored in 32 bits; OCaml
characters are only 8 bits wide, and so OCaml has a 4x advantage right
away - but loses the potential for i18n.

HTH.

--KW 8-)

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