Differentiate between Pair and 2-Tuples

[MicroProofs]

First the what?

So in Aiken we represent all tuples of size 3 or greater as list of Data which is the same as how fields in a constructor are represented in uplc.

But 2 tuple makes use of one of the few primitives in uplc, Pair. Pair is quick to grab either item.

The why?

Using them in lists is friendly since that's a map structure. Using them in constructors though is not great. Lists hold them as pairs. But constructors can only hold data. So we must convert a pair to something that can represent the two items, which is a list.

A list can convert to data using listData builtin quickly and it can hold the pairs two items. But that conversion process to a list is not cheap. We must spend a bit of memory coding up a way to extract the two items from pair, add the two items to a list, and then call listData.

The Solution

In Aiken we can add a new primitive to the prelude called Pair<a, b>. This would be a type with a few special properties similar to how the BLS primitives also have a few special properties. The first would be Pair can be used by itself or in a List, but it can not be passed into a function that takes a generic argument or used inside any other type besides lists. To replace that 2 tuples and beyond which will now uniformly use arrays will work anywhere. The only place Pairs are commonly needed are the script context. In most cases users would end up using 2 tuples which would work the same as using 3+ tuples.

[rvcas]

+1

[KtorZ]

You know there's literally an upvote button on discussions right 😅 ?

[MicroProofs]

wasn't plus one enough

[rvcas]

You know there's literally an upvote button on discussions right 😅 ?

+1

[KtorZ]

@MicroProofs not sure if that's a real question but, the benefits of the upvote on the discussion is that it's visible outside of the discussion, on the list views. So it's easier to see which discussions are getting "popular" without having to go back and read through comments.

[MicroProofs]

@MicroProofs not sure if that's a real question but, the benefits of the upvote on the discussion is that it's visible outside of the discussion, on the list views. So it's easier to see which discussions are getting "popular" without having to go back and read through comments.

sorry bad joke

[MicroProofs]

More importance to this one now

[MicroProofs]

Updated the title post with more details.