On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 14:08 -0700, Stephane Glondu wrote:

> BTW, I was talking about 'a array option, not 'a option array. You can use 
> (mostly of) the implementation of Buffer, hence have the same 
> efficiency... I don't understand your point about "efficiency". If you 
> think that the Buffer implementation is not efficient, I may agree with 
> you, but this is an algorithmic issue, not a typing issue. 

Observe the constructor:

let create n =
 let n = if n < 1 then 1 else n in
 let n = if n > Sys.max_string_length then Sys.max_string_length else n
in
 let s = String.create n in
 {buffer = s; position = 0; length = n; initial_buffer = s}

creates an *uninitialised* string of length n:

"val create : int -> string
String.create n returns a fresh string of length n. The string initially
contains arbitrary characters."

If you have to initialise the store, it is expensive,
and if you have to provide a dummy value it is hard
to use.

If you used a 'a array option, and 

assert (match Some a -> Array.length a > 0 | None -> true)

then you can use the first value of the array as
the dummy value for the rest of the array, and avoid
Obj.magic -- however this is very inefficient, since
the dummy would have to be changed in many places
whenever the first entry in the array changed
(and that isn't just a store -- there is a write-barrier
to think about .. :)

That won't happen in Buffer because you can't modify it,
but it must be allowed in more general variable length
mutable array.


-- 
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sourceforge dot net>