Benjamin Fransen writes: > There *is no* difference between the two if one views them as pure > mathematical values. Questions of run time speed or memory usage, i.e. > efficiency (which your original question was about) are clearly outside the > realm of pure values, and thus we may perceive them as distinct in this wider > setting. > > My favourite analogy for this is the old joke about a topologist being a > person who cannot see any difference between a cup and a doghnut.
The engineer's response, of course, at the thought of ignoring questions about run time speed and memory usage, is that a topologist is a person who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. (I was told this quote was actually from abstract algebraists, when confronted by the famous description of a topologist, but what the heck.) Dave Barton EDAptive Computing _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe