Re: [Ocaml-lib-devel] Shared strings

[Nicolas C. <war...@fr...>]

> (There was a discussion on this a few months ago on one of the lists
> but I can't find it now ...)
> 
> Does anyone have a library or code for sharing strings?  I have a
> program which processes a lot of data from a file, including repeated
> strings, and it's important to minimize memory usage.
> 
> Something like:
> 
> open Shared
> 
> let s = <string read from some source> in
> let s = shared s
> 
> where the 'shared' function would return either the same string, or an
> identical string from a previous call to 'shared'.
> 
> I'm aware of the problems of mutability with strings, but my program
> can guarantee that I won't change the shared strings.
> 
> Rich.

What about using an Hashtbl ?
It provides a fair comparison function based on hashed strings.

Nicolas Cannasse