Compound terms and lists in Prolog

Question

Why are complex terms preferable to lists in terms of performance? For instance,

matrix(row(1,2,3),row(1,2,3),row(1,2,3))

preferable

[[1,2,3],[1,2,3],[1,2,3],[1,2,3]]

Thank!

Answer 1

Something that the other (excellent) answer did not mention:

Access to the list item by its position means that you need to go through the list. Access to the term argument should be possible at a constant time. Thus, for random access, the term should be more effective.

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Put aside: you can try to make the list move slightly faster. But the SWI-Prolog implementationnth0_det/3 almost smells like despair;)

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Answer 2

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, , write_canonical/1. , GNU Prolog:

| ?- write_canonical([1,2,3]).  
'.'(1,'.'(2,'.'(3,[])))

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• 3

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• (, []).

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Answer 3

. . functor(arg1, arg2, ..., argn, ...), arg/3 . O (N) O (1) Prolog.

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