Interesting work on packing tuple layout

[Avrina]

On Sunday, 14 June 2020 at 03:08:48 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> On 6/13/20 7:30 PM, Timon Gehr wrote:
>> Another question is if automatic packing is worth making the 
>> layout harder to predict.
>
> I think so. Size does matter.

If you are talking about implementing a tuple type into the 
language, and that the *default* behavior should be that it 
stores the elements in a tuple in memory to be as efficiently as 
it can be. That would be more limiting. If implemented correctly 
then a tuple that store it in memory the way it is specified in 
order. Then you could implement the storing one on top of it with 
a library implementation. This will allow the user to customize 
how it is stored. What is efficient or not could differ from 
person to person and what they are doing. If it was implemented 
in the language with it changing the storage to be organized for 
size. Then you couldn't implement anything any other way, you are 
stuck with what is forced on you.