[racket] Racket Virtual Machine runs out of memory

10 minutes ago, Harry Spier wrote:
> #lang racket
> (define l (time (build-list (* 7091 5023) (λ (x) 1))))
> (system "PAUSE")
> 
> ABORTS with Racket Virtual Machine run out of memory

IME, the exact size where things fail is not important -- if you're
getting anywhere close to it, then you should revise the code to use
less memory.

There was the option that was raised for using integers, which might
be inconvenient -- even with one (huge) integer for each row.
Instead, I think that it would be convenient to use one big byte
string for the whole array, and write some accessor functions to
address the contents as a matrix.  The exact format of the byte string
can be one byte per 1/0 pixel or even more compactly, one bit per
pixel.  The choice should depend on whatever libraries you're using
with the same data, to minimize translation work.  (Dealing with bits
will make the access code a bit more complicated.)

Currently, you're using one cons cell for each number, which is
probably somewhere around 3 pointers -- which is about 12 bytes per
bit.  So just a one byte for each number would be a 12x factor, with
one bit per 1/0, you're at ~100x saving, which would be significant
enough to reduce other processing times.

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                    http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is Life!