On Tuesday 15 March 2005 23:07, William D.Neumann wrote:
> His point seems to be that programming in a
> "functional style"[1] is inherently slower than an imperative style
> because a list or a map have different performance characteristics than
> do arrays.

True, but don't forget that using arrays does not imply imperative programming 
in general. For example, I partook in a thread on c.l.functional recently, 
comparing the performance of the sieve of Erasthenes (I know, a 
microbenchmark) in different languages. With a purely functional 
implementation of arrays, the Haskell implementation beat C++ (with 
vector<bool>) and was even competing with OCaml for a short while!

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
Objective CAML for Scientists
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists