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From: petera@hcrvax.UUCP (Smith)
Newsgroups: net.lang,net.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Re: Using LISP for scientific programming? (gasp!)
Message-ID: <2018@hcrvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Oct-85 16:55:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: hcrvax.2018
Posted: Thu Oct 17 16:55:07 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Oct-85 11:34:51 EDT
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Organization: Human Computing Resources, Toronto
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	One thing that is ineffecient when using LISP for numeric computations
is that on many machines a new cell is created for a new value of any numeric
type. This means that any loops etc that increment values or do any kind of
numeric computations will result in a trail of old values waiting to be 
collected. I suspect that unless you specificially request that the cell 
itself be modified any LISP implementation of a lengthy numerical operation
will have to do a fair bit of garbage collection.  Bottom Line? A simply
coded numerical algorithm in LISP will require as much or more garbage 
collection than any other LISP program and certainly more garbage collection
than most FORTRAN programs do (ie none).

		Peter Ashwood-Smith
		Human Computing Resources,
		Toronto, Ontario.