From ... From: Erik Naggum Subject: Re: Short question: the letter n Date: 2000/04/26 Message-ID: <3165772301708818@naggum.no>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 616077449 References: <8e70vq$63t$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3165754543082761@naggum.no> <390750A9.F7A816C8@my-dejanews.com> mail-copies-to: never Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@eunet.no X-Trace: oslo-nntp.eunet.no 956784454 3415 195.0.192.66 (26 Apr 2000 21:27:34 GMT) Organization: Naggum Software; vox: +47 8800 8879; fax: +47 8800 8601; http://www.naggum.no User-Agent: Gnus/5.0803 (Gnus v5.8.3) Emacs/20.5 Mime-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: 26 Apr 2000 21:27:34 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp * "Scott L. Burson" | My understanding has always been that it was intended to suggest | operations that ran in linear time ("O(n)"). time to scratch your understanding... | This doesn't really make sense, because REVERSE, and (I think, off | the cuff) most of the other consing versions of these operations | also run in linear time -- it's just a much longer linear time | because of the cost of first creating and later GC-ing the new | conses. you're quite mistaken on this, too. the non-consing versions do not (necessarily) run faster for a number of really hairy reasons. they don't cons. that's all. GC'ing dead objects doesn't take time in a whole bunch of GC implementations -- e.g., it takes time to keep objects _alive_ from generation to generation in a generational GC. | Whom could we ask to get the real scoop? Guy Steele, perhaps? John | McCarthy? just trust me. :) #:Erik