CODEWITHSUNDEEP
perldata-structures
madCode
madCode

Reputation: 3913

Internal memory representation of LISTS in Perl

How are LISTS internally represented in PERL? I had someone telling me it is represented as linked lists, True? If so won't that be a overhead on the interpreter? I'm unable to visualize it.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 454

Answers (1)

ysth
ysth

Reputation: 98398

Lists in Perl are stored on the stack. It is an array, resized when necessary, with a second array used to store pointers to demarcate different lists.

If you meant arrays, not lists, Perl arrays consist of a C array of pointers, an allocated size of that array, an offset to the current beginning of the Perl array in the C array, and a used length.

I don't know what you mean by "overhead". Running programs is an overhead on the interpreter in general :) But in fact Perl does not use linked lists for arrays or lists.

Upvotes: 6

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