Re: OON: Comparison between Fortran & C++

From: Arch Robison (robison@kai.com)
Date: Fri Mar 24 2000 - 13:02:42 EST


If you really want to tweak the nose of the "safe languages" fans,
there's an representation/algorithm for implementing set operations that
requires allocation of unitialized arrays, and worse yet, deliberately reads
and uses uninitialized values. See:

        Briggs, Preston and Linda Torczon, ``An Efficient Representation for Sparse Sets'',
        ACM LOPLAS, Vol. 2, Nos. 1-4, Mar-Dec. 1993, p.59-69.

The zinger is that "safe" languages like Java cause parts of the algorithm
to run in O(N) time instead of O(1) time. I.e., the slowdown is not just
a constant but asymptotic!

Arch D. Robison Kuck & Associates Inc.
robison@kai.com 1906 Fox Drive
217-356-2288 ext. 56 Champaign IL 61820
Lead Developer for KAI C++ http://www.kai.com/C_plus_plus/index.html

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