Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:
> Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org> writes:
> 
> 
>>>type comparison_result = Less | Equals | Greater
>>>
>>>What are the reasons behind the present design choice?
>>
>>Wouldn't it be for speed?  You could define Pervasives.compare over
>>integers just as a subtraction.
> 
> 
> You can't, because of overflow.
> 

Actually, since integers in OCaml are limited to (n-1) bits where n=32
or n=64 depending on architecture, overflow shouldn't be a problem. (The
comments in byterun/compare.c also seem to agree with that.)

Even so, it would be very slow to the polymorphic compare to compare
integers, so if one cares about efficiency, direct subtraction is
preferable.

-- 
Bardur Arantsson
<bardur@imada.sdu.dk>
<bardur@scientician.net>

"Mr. T to pity fool."
                                          http://www.theonion.com