Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!pa.dec.com!src.dec.com!hudson@yough.cs.umass.edu
From: hudson@yough.cs.umass.edu (Rick Hudson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula3
Subject: Re: Two Oberon questions
Message-ID: <9104191350.AA07429@yough.ucc.umass.edu>
Date: 19 Apr 91 13:50:08 GMT
Reply-To: hudson@vax1.cs.umass.edu
Lines: 15
To: m3

stolfi@src.dec.COM writes:
>
> It should cost only two or three instructions to return a two-word
> record as a procedure result.  If you account for the cost of running
> the garbage collector, allocating that same record from the heap may
> well cost thousands of instructions---two or three orders of magnitude
> more.
> 

Around here we sit around and count the number of instructions/record it takes
to do allocation and garbage collection on our fingers. This myth that GC
takes thousands of instruction for each allocation just isn't true. I agree
that structured returns are certainly useful, but the readability and
expressability arguments are the important ones.
- Rick