[gclist] Reference counting on the fingers of one thumb.

[Henry G. Baker]

> One of the tricky things in a language like this is that if you take
> the specification literally, there is an awful lot of copying.  You can
> use the SETL trick at run time to eliminate some of it, but an even
> better trick is to do as much as you can at compile time.

'Hash-consing' is a _general_ solution to your copying problem, and is
within O(1) of the best possible.  See

ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/hb/hbaker/LinearLisp.html
(also .ps.Z)

-- 
Henry Baker
www/ftp directory:
ftp.netcom.com:/pub/hb/hbaker/home.html