Arrays vs tuples / lists

[Erik Stenman]

Actually the pattern matching is slightly faster, 
because it is inline expanded while the call to hd
require a function call (in the current implementation).

   He states boldly without actually benchmariking on 
   the latest implementation.
 But it seems to be true in  V5.2.3.3.

Erik 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-erlang-questions@REDACTED 
> [mailto:owner-erlang-questions@REDACTED] On Behalf Of 
> Thomas Johnsson
> Sent: Tuesday,18 May, 2004 13:06
> To: Ulf Wiger
> Cc: erlang-questions@REDACTED
> Subject: Re: Arrays vs tuples / lists
> 
> 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.
> 
> -- Thomas
> 
> >
> > Ok, that was perhaps a bit too terse, but I was sitting with an 
> > impatient baby in my lap (she hasn't quite grasped the beauty of 
> > Erlang yet, but I'm working on it.)
> >
> > test:tup(Iterations, DataSize) runs a tight loop accessing 
> objects via 
> > element/2 in a tuple with 10,000 elements.
> >
> > test:ets/2 does the same thing, but with an ets set 
> containing 10,000 
> > objects.
> >
> > Due to the very limited precision of erlang:now() on my 
> windows box, I 
> > ran 1,000 iterations where I accessed all 10,000 objects each 
> > iterations.
> >
> > As you can see, tuple accesses are independent of data size, as the 
> > data already resides on the process heap. With ets, there is always 
> > copying, so as the object size increases, so does the cost of a 
> > lookup.
> >
> > Even with the smallest type of payload (an atom), element/2 
> is nearly 
> > an order of magnitude faster than ets:lookup/2.
> >
> > Note, this is only read access. As soon as you start using
> > setelement/3 on a tuple of size 10,000, the picture shifts rather 
> > dramatically.
> >
> > /Uffe
> >
> >
> > On Mon, 17 May 2004 21:14:11 +0200, Ulf Wiger 
> <ulf.wiger@REDACTED> wrote:
> >
> >> On Mon, 17 May 2004 18:13:01 +0200 (CEST), Thomas Johnsson 
> >> <thomas@REDACTED> wrote:
> >>
> >>>>
> >>>> As long as you only look up stuff in large tuples, 
> access is very 
> >>>> fast and O(1).
> >>>
> >>> Splendid! Presumably it is faster than an ets table 
> lookup with an 
> >>> integer as key; by how much, roughly?
> >>>
> >>> -- Thomas
> >>>
> >>
> >> Well, it's reasonably easy to measure (at least on UNIX...) (I've 
> >> enclosed a small test program, and a test run on a 3GHz XP box.)
> >>
> >> /Uffe
> >>
> >> Erlang (BEAM) emulator version 5.3 [threads:0]
> >>
> >> Eshell V5.3  (abort with ^G)
> >> 1> cd("c:/cygwin/home/foo/erl").
> >> c:/cygwin/home/foo/erl
> >> ok
> >> 2> c(test).
> >> {ok,test}
> >> 3> test:tup(1000,small).
> >> {625000,ok}
> >> 4> test:tup(1000,medium).
> >> {609000,ok}
> >> 5> test:tup(1000,big).
> >> {609000,ok}
> >> 6> test:ets(1000,small).
> >> {4156000,ok}
> >> 7> test:ets(1000,medium).
> >> {8718000,ok}
> >> 8> test:ets(1000,big).
> >> {138594000,ok}
> >> 9> test:empty(1000).
> >> {531000,ok}
> >> 10>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Ulf Wiger
> >
> >
> 
>