Canonical type nodes, or, comptypes considered harmful

[Mike Stump]

On Nov 7, 2006, at 3:53 PM, Mike Stump wrote:
> Anyway, in C++, the entire template mechanism was rife with building  
> up duplicates.

Oh, and as for why not having a canonical type is bad, callers to  
comptypes are notorious for just beating it to death:

   http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2002-11/msg00537.html

My conclusion at the end was, the best speed up possible, isn't to  
mess with the callers, but rather, to get types canonicalized, then  
all the work that comptypes would normally do, hopefully, just all  
goes away.  Though, in the long run those quadratic algorithms have to  
one day die, even if comptypes is fixed.