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Diffstat (limited to 'system/doc/efficiency_guide/retired_myths.xml')
| -rw-r--r-- | system/doc/efficiency_guide/retired_myths.xml | 14 |
1 files changed, 14 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/system/doc/efficiency_guide/retired_myths.xml b/system/doc/efficiency_guide/retired_myths.xml index 9b914a3b6e..144c942c2b 100644 --- a/system/doc/efficiency_guide/retired_myths.xml +++ b/system/doc/efficiency_guide/retired_myths.xml @@ -60,4 +60,18 @@ That leads us to the myth that tail-recursive functions are faster than body-recursive functions.</p> </section> + + <section> + <title>Myth: List subtraction ("--" operator) is slow</title> + + <p>List subtraction used to have a run-time complexity proportional to the + product of the length of its operands, so it was extremely slow when both + lists were long.</p> + + <p>As of OTP 22 the run-time complexity is "n log n" and the operation will + complete quickly even when both lists are very long. In fact, it is + faster and uses less memory than the commonly used workaround to convert + both lists to ordered sets before subtracting them with + <c>ordsets:subtract/2</c>.</p> + </section> </chapter> |