[MLton] MLton rules! (was: filedes = int)

[Jens Axel Søgaard]

Henry Cejtin wrote:
> Python big ints (longs) are built-in, but slow as a dog.  Similarly, OCaml's
> are slow.  Both Python and OCaml provide access to libgmp precisely because
> it is so much faster.  It really makes a huge difference if you care about
> the speed of such calculations, especially if the numbers are very large
> (thousands of digits).

It is indeed important that the interfacing to GMP is done right.

Calculations with numbers that bounce back and forth between the
the fixnum and bignum size is likely to occur:

     <http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/~jaffer/CNS/DIMPA>

Jaffer has some nice observations on where to direct the most
attention to tuning the performance of arithemetical calculations.

The anecdote of the introduction of GMP in Guile is telling...

-- 
Jens Axel Søgaard