TY  - CONF
A1  - Geske, Ulrich
A1  - Goltz, Hans-Joachim
T1  - Efficiency of difference-list programming
N2  - The difference-list technique is described in literature as effective method for extending lists to the right without using calls of append/3. There exist some proposals for automatic transformation of list programs into differencelist programs. However, we are interested in construction of difference-list programs by the programmer, avoiding the need of a transformation step. In [GG09] it was demonstrated, how left-recursive procedures with a dangling call of append/3 can be transformed into right-recursion using the unfolding technique. For simplification of writing difference-list programs using a new cons/2 procedure was introduced. In the present paper, we investigate how efficieny is influenced using cons/2. We measure the efficiency of procedures using accumulator technique, cons/2, DCG’s, and difference lists and compute the resulting speedup in respect to the simple procedure definition using append/3. Four Prolog systems were investigated and we found different behaviour concerning the speedup by difference lists. A result of our investigations is, that an often advice given in the literature for avoiding calls append/3 could not be confirmed in this strong formulation.
Y1  - 2010
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/3972
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-41563
ER  -