[erlang-questions] when any why to use improper lists

[Dmitry Belyaev]

It's a way to reduce memory footprint.

Tuple of size N is roughly represented in memory as an array [TupleTag, N,
TupleElement1, TupleElement2, ..., TupleElementN].
Compare it to Cons cell representation: [ConsTag, HeadElement, TailElement]
- it saves 1 word per structure.

Kind regards,
Dmitry Belyaev

On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 9:50 AM, Karlo Kuna <kuna.prime@REDACTED> wrote:

> dealing with digraph module i have noticed use of improper lists as
> representations of edges:
> ['$e' | 123]
>
> is there a good reason to use improper lists instead of tuple for this and
> in general
> when is a good idea to use improper lists?? (i can't think of example for
> justified use)
>
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