Erlang Efficiency quesitons

[James Hague]

> I like some of the ramifications of optimizing strings.  For example
> Erlang programs would compile a bit quicker (unless I'm profoundly
> mistaken about how the compiler works.)

Ah, but you can do that with the current system!  The lexer reads a file as
a binary, then turns it into a list. All that is needed is to have the lexer
operate on the binary directly.  Pattern matching on binaries is already
available, so this can be be done just fine in R7.

After the lexing stage, the program is represented as a list of tuples, so
you won't get much further benefit from speeding up strings.

James