[REBOL] Re: Sameness - a pragmatic approach.
From: lmecir:mbox:vol:cz at: 12-Feb-2003 9:33
Hi Gabriele!
> LM> Although we have thousand identical O's, the memory
> LM> consumption is bigger than for one O exactly like in the case
> LM> of 1's. Interestingly enough, the memory consumed additionally
> LM> is the same in both cases.
>
> But that is the memory consumed by the block, not the objects
> themselves.
Exactly, that is why both thousand O's and thousand 1's behaved alike. My
pragmatic POV is, that no confusion has been caused WRT the memory
allocation.
I can imagine a situation (with more complicated immutable values), when
identical values can be stored at different places in the computer memory
and therefore consume more memory, than one could superficially expect.
OTOH, I can even imagine a situation, when a mutable value can use
(temporarily) the same computer memory as another value until a mutation
occurs (quite usual strategy).
Summary: your model task didn't help us to find any advantages/disadvantages
of any approach.
Regards
-L