scheme vs common lisp

Kragen kragen@pobox.com
Sun, 22 Mar 1998 16:12:45 -0500 (EST)


On Sun, 22 Mar 1998, Chris Bitmead wrote:
> > After reading the implementation notes for RScheme; every object in
> > RScheme has a two word header so a cons object uses 16 bytes of memory
> 
> Why 16 bytes, and not 12 bytes?

One word is 32 bits on most modern machines.  Thus, one word for the car, one
word for the cdr, two words for the header -- total four words.  32 bits is 4
bytes, thus 16 bytes per cons.

Kragen