Arranging arguments for speed

[Joe Armstrong]

 erlc -S ... works even better :-)

 I tried this with 

f(X,alpha) -> a;
f(X,bravo) -> b;
f(X,zebra) -> c.

g(alpha,X) -> a;
g(bravo,X) -> b;
g(zebra,X) -> c.

 Looking in the object code file

 You'll see it generated 


{function, f, 2, 2}.
  {label,1}.
    {func_info,{atom,test},{atom,f},2}.
  {label,2}.
    {test,is_atom,{f,1},[{x,1}]}.
    {select_val,{x,1},
                {f,1},
                {list,[{atom,zebra},
                       {f,3},
                       {atom,bravo},
                       {f,4},
                       {atom,alpha},
                       {f,5}]}}.
  ...

and 

{function, g, 2, 7}.
  {label,6}.
    {func_info,{atom,test},{atom,g},2}.
  {label,7}.
    {test,is_atom,{f,6},[{x,0}]}.
    {select_val,{x,0},
                {f,6},
                {list,[{atom,zebra},
                       {f,8},
                       {atom,bravo},
                       {f,9},
                       {atom,alpha},
                       {f,10}]}}.
...

In other words - logically *identical* code - which is as it should be.


/Joe

On Mon, 24 Mar 2003, Thomas Lindgren wrote:

> 
> --- Roger Price <rprice@REDACTED> wrote:
> > Given a function such as
> > 
> >   f(X,alpha) -> ...;
> >   f(X,bravo) -> ...;
> >       .....
> >   f(X,zebra) -> ... .,
> > 
> > would it run faster if re-written as
> > 
> >   g(alpha,X) -> ...;
> >   g(bravo,X) -> ...;
> >       .....
> >   g(zebra,X) -> ... . ?
> > 
> > It was certainly the case for a Prolog system I once
> > used, and I wondered
> > if Erlang also used a hash of the function name and
> > the first argument to
> > find the clause.
> 
> There is luckily no need for that. The BEAM compiler
> uses a more flexible algorithm than most Prologs. (The
> reason is roughly that unification is hairier than
> pattern matching, so one normally has to be more
> conservative in a Prolog compiler.)
> 
> Try 'erl -S foo.erl' to get the BEAM code for foo and
> see if it looks right. 
> 
> Best,
> Thomas
> 
> 
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