Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!agate!ucbvax!UNO.BITNET!BEB From: BEB@UNO.BITNET (Bruce Bettis) Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2 Subject: Re: Recursively defined data types Message-ID: Date: 18 Feb 88 22:35:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Info-Modula2 Distribution List Organization: The Internet Lines: 16 The concept of recursively defined data types is, I think, intuitively clean and elegant, but only from a theoretical perspective. The cold hard realities are: (1) the size of a static or dynamic allocation is impossible to determine with the same elegance, (2) each recursive structure would be contiguous in memory, with all the constraints that implies, (3) assignments require more (sometimes *lots* more) resources, namely cpu cycles and memory. These are the three biggies, to me, I imagine there are lots of other practical reasons to prefer referential structures. Still, it's a nice concept :) Bruce death before disclaimer <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> <>Handle: Bruce Bettis USnail: University of New Orleans <> <>BITnet: Computer Research Center <> <>Voices: (504) 286-7067 New Orleans, La. 70148 <> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>