Q.Yang wrote in his e-mail message of 1995/08/23

Getting right to the point, which one of the following lists would
consume more memory for GAP?
1)   [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
2)   [7060504030201]

Each GAP object (except for small integers, which are represented
immediately) has a 16 byte overhead.

A list occupies 4 bytes for the length and 4 bytes per entry
(plus up to 25% more memory preallocated for future expansions).

A large integer <n> occupies log_2(<n>)/8 bytes, rounded up to
the next multiple of 8 bytes.

So the first list occupies 16 + 4 + 7 * 4 = 48 bytes.

And the second list occupies 16 + 4 + 1 * 4 + 16 + 8 = 48 bytes.

Why do you need to know?

Martin.

-- .- .-. - .. -.  .-.. --- ...- . ...  .- -. -. .. -.- .-
Martin Sch"onert,   Martin.Schoenert@Math.RWTH-Aachen.DE,   +49 241 804551
Lehrstuhl D f"ur Mathematik, Templergraben 64, RWTH, 52056 Aachen, Germany