From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id UAA31663 for caml-redistribution@pauillac.inria.fr; Wed, 19 Apr 2000 20:59:24 +0200 (MET DST) Resent-Message-Id: <200004191859.UAA31663@pauillac.inria.fr> Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id UAA02531 for ; Wed, 19 Apr 2000 20:31:33 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from codex.cis.upenn.edu (CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU [158.130.6.15]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id UAA11525 for ; Wed, 19 Apr 2000 20:31:18 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (from mwh@localhost) by codex.cis.upenn.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id OAA11872; Wed, 19 Apr 2000 14:30:49 -0400 (EDT) From: Michael Hicks Message-Id: <200004191830.OAA11872@codex.cis.upenn.edu> Subject: Re: When functional languages can be accepted by industry? To: bpr@best.com (Brian Rogoff) Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 14:30:48 -0400 (EDT) Cc: skaller@maxtal.com.au, alliot@recherche.enac.fr, caml-list@inria.fr In-Reply-To: from "Brian Rogoff" at Apr 17, 2000 03:34:08 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23-upenn3.3] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Resent-From: weis@pauillac.inria.fr Resent-Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 20:59:24 +0200 Resent-To: caml-redistribution@pauillac.inria.fr > I believe that the Stalin compiler for Scheme, which is a whole program > compiler (you give up separate compilation) has done better than C on some > much more significant programs than fibonacci. I suspect that any compiler > which abandons separate compilation and does aggressive whole program > analysis may have problems with extremely large programs, but I don't have > evidence to back this up. > > I presume that a similar compiler for an ML variant could be written. Given > that the Caml team has limited resources, I'd rather they spend them > elsewhere, as I am satisfied with the performance of OCaml for the problems > I apply it to. I realize that others have different priorities. In fact, researchers at NECI have developed a whole-program Standard ML compiler, called MLton. You can read about it at http://external.nj.nec.com/PLS/MLton/ In general, its programs run 2-3x faster than SML/NJ, but occasionally they are a bit slower. Mike -- Michael Hicks Ph.D. Candidate, the University of Pennsylvania http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mwh mailto://mwh@dsl.cis.upenn.edu "Every time someone asks me to do something, I ask if they want French fries with that." -- testimonial of a former McDonald's employee