Arrays vs tuples / lists

[Erik Stenman]

> On Tue, May 18, 2004 at 01:05:35PM +0200, Thomas Johnsson wrote:
> > Hi,
> > thanks for doing the benchmarking for me.
> > One note: the ets lookup is done with
> >    [X] = ets:lookup(Tab, Pos),
> > which involves a pattern matching on the lhs, that has a cost.
> > Could you re-run it on the same box, with
> >     X = head(ets:lookup(Tab, Pos)),
> > 
> > or some such? Head must do a similar check, but presumably 
> it is cheaper.
> 
> If the second version is faster, then the Erlang compiler is 
> stupid, and I do not think that it is.
> 
> Or is there any semantic difference between the two that I 
> have overlooked?

There is a small difference:
 [X] Guarantees that the length is 1
 hd(X) Guarantees that the length is > 1

but as I said [X] is probably slightly faster.

Erik