Ah.  I personally have a vendetta against floating
point in general, so I'll stay away from that one
then, as I don't want yet another discussion to
degrade into a flame war.  If anyone's curious about
my thoughts on the matter in detail, they can feel
free to email me directly, though.

--- skaller <skaller@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 2005-07-27 at 08:35 -0700, David Thomas
> wrote:
> > I'm still curious what numerical algorithm is so
> > desperately in need of variable length arrays...
> 
> I think I was not clear. Normally Ocaml boxes
> contain either an int or a heap pointer
> to a data object. So a floating point value
> is represented by a pointer.
> 
> Doing numerical programming with an array
> of pointers to floats instead of an
> array of floats has a performance impact,
> so Ocaml now provides arrays of unboxed floats.
> 
> I wasn't referring to the need for variable length
> arrays
> in numerical code, but the need to circumvent boxing
> in numerical code for arrays of numerical values:
> this is considered significant enough to warrant
> specialised compiler optimisations and data
> structures.
> 
> The point being, arrays of boxes are considered
> inefficient,
> and in some cases it is already considered
> significant
> enough for considerable work to be done to fix it.
> 
> So arguing an extra indirection required for the
> array of option solution to variable length arrays
> is insignificant is contrary to the evidence that
> INRIA already accepts it can be inefficient.
> 
> Again, this is not to say variable length arrays
> without this extra overhead should be provided,
> just that the argument that the overhead is not
> significant is suspect.
> 
> -- 
> John Skaller <skaller at users dot sourceforge dot
> net>
> 
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