Man/Boy test and why Julia doesn't specialize functional arguments by default.

gfr1337 — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 05:28:35 +0000

module ManBoy
export man, boy, manboy
export @main

function man(k::Int, f1::Function, f2::Function, f3::Function, f4::Function, f5::Function)::Int
    x = Ref(k)
    b = () -> begin
        x[] -= 1
        man(x[], b, f1, f2, f3, f4)::Int
    end
    if x[] <= 0
        return f4() + f5()
    else
        return b()
    end
end

function boy(k::Int, f1::F1, f2::F2, f3::F3, f4::F4, f5::F5)::Int where {F1 <: Function, F2 <: Function, F3 <: Function, F4 <: Function, F5 <: Function}
    x = Ref(k)
    b = () -> begin
        x[] -= 1
        boy(x[], b, f1, f2, f3, f4)::Int
    end
    if x[] <= 0
        return f4() + f5()
    else
        return b()
    end
end

function manboy(n::Int)
    println("man($n)")
    @time println(man(n, () -> 1, () -> -1, () -> -1, () -> 1, () -> 0))
    println("boy($n)")
    @time println(boy(n, () -> 1, () -> -1, () -> -1, () -> 1, () -> 0))
end

function @main()(args)
    manboy(5)
    manboy(10)
    manboy(15)
end

end # module ManBoy

man(5)
0
  0.095508 seconds (58.51 k allocations: 3.080 MiB, 99.78% compilation time)
boy(5)
0
  0.070338 seconds (52.65 k allocations: 2.727 MiB, 99.63% compilation time)
man(10)
-67
  0.116278 seconds (52.27 k allocations: 3.307 MiB, 27.42% gc time, 71.93% compilation time)
boy(10)
-67
  1.764479 seconds (57.47 k allocations: 3.571 MiB, 99.95% compilation time)
man(15)
-3250
  0.438978 seconds (220.55 k allocations: 163.185 MiB, 67.07% gc time, 19.28% compilation time)
boy(15)
-3250
 46.606029 seconds (261.17 k allocations: 167.955 MiB, 0.22% gc time, 99.65% compilation time)

Julia Community 🟣: gfr1337

Man/Boy test and why Julia doesn't specialize functional arguments by default.