> Years ago, we added a "final rearrangement" to the property lists of
> atoms that had simplification properties, so that the most-likely-used
> property would be first on the symbol's prop-list.
By the way:
Some newer hunks of code use hash tables instead of the property list;
for example, *flonum-op* and *big-float-op* are hash tables that hold
functions
for numerical evaluation of trig-like function.
I don't know how much these hash tables increase speed, but surely it's
the
best approach---a user could locally change the entire hash table for big
float evaluation
for trig-like functions by simply building a new hash table.
Converting all the property list stuff to hash tables is a good project
for somebody
that is super careful.
--Barton