Re: O(1) performance for insertions/deletions at the front of an Array/String

--- Yukihiro Matsumoto <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> In message "Re: O(1) performance for insertions/deletions at
> the front of an Array/String"
>     on Mon, 4 Jul 2005 07:37:23 +0900, Eric Mahurin
> <[e-mail]> writes:
> 
> |The main difference I saw was that a character would be
> |represented as String rather than a Fixnum.  I'd rather see
> it
> |remain an Integer to handle the unicode encodings - Fixnum
> when
> |that is enough and Bignum where needed.  That would give
> better
> |compatibility.  And efficiency when dealing with encodings
> that
> |fit in a Fixnum.
> 
> Ruby's strings may not be in Unicode, so that simple fixnum
> does not
> hold encoding information.

Do you have a preliminary spec of what the API is going to look
like?  I would mainly like to see what the definition the a
character is going to be - instead of a Fixnum.

> |I just hope the common set of methods between Array and
> String
> |don't get smaller.
> 
> We won't remove existing methods from both classes, although
> we don't
> encourage illusion of strings being array of something.
> 
> 							matz.

Why?  For my purposes, I think of a String as a sequence of
characters.  I don't mind too much if the definition of a
character changes (to something variable length or whatever),
but I do need all the methods that access characters now to
still access characters (and not just bytes) - []/slice, []=,
slice!, <<, size/length.


Also, did you have any opinion about the original topic on this
thread? - making insertions/deletions at the front of an
Array/String O(1).  This would be useful when dealing with a
large Array or String.  You could also cut the random access
insert/delete time in half by taking advantage of it.



		
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