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On Mon, 11 Aug 2008, Derick Eddington wrote: <lotsa snip>
If rtd-field-names can directly return an internal data structure, that's obviously going to be the most efficient, but will it be able to or should it do that? Is it really a performance concern? Implementations of rtd-all-field-names will probably use rtd-field-names, so rtd-all-field-names' performance will be affected by rtd-field-names, but is it really a concern? What is an example where the efficiency of using vector field specifiers versus list field specifiers for the API matters? rtd-accessor and rtd-mutator take a field name symbol argument (I like that) instead of a numeric index like R6RS does, and that seems like a similar performance concern which might not really need to be a concern. What could a sophisticated optimizing compiler do for these six procedures?
SRFIs have to have reference implementations. It's better when theyre usable and reasonably efficient than when they're not. It's also possible to design them in a clean, general fashion, rather than worrying about what kind of compiler they have. This is especially important for ERR5RS as a point of contrast and portability. -elf