machine code size of functional languages

[Karel Van Oudheusden]

Greetings,

I was just reading "A Comparison Between Erlang and C++ for
Implementation of Telecom Applications" written by T. Aronsson and J
Grafstrom.

In the text the remark is made that applications written in functional
languages
(Haskell, Erlang) are generally shorter than applications written in
imperative languages (C, C++).

Does anybody have recent material (information) on this?
I also assume that the source code size is meant.
What about the machine code size?
Are functional languages also shorter in machine code size than
imperative ones?  Does this depend on the kind of application, if so
what kind?

thanx,
Karel V.O.