From: William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...>
Date: 2002-09-17T03:51:58+09:00
Subject: Re: Is Ruby Array#shift/unshift Efficient?

Hi Matz,

Thanks a lot for the response.

Now this is a general question to anyone.  In the field of data
structures, there are so many of them, and each one is efficient for
certain types of operation.  However, it seems that most scripting
languages provide only array and hash, like Ruby, Python, and Perl.  The
original Tcl still provided array, list, and hash.  Some other languages
like Lua even provides only hash.

In using a scripting language, aren't we concerned with the underlying
data structure itself?  Is the answer:

1) Beside array and hash, other data structures are not "practical", in
the sense that they are very rarely used.

2) In a scripting language, the efficiency of array vs. list is immaterial
as compared with the overhead of the scripting language itself.

3) Or something else?

I think this is interesting, as in C++ I always have to decide at least to
use a vector or a list (or even a deque) when I need an ordered
collection.  But in Ruby, there is no such choice (at least using the
built-in classes).

Regards,

Bill
=============================================================================
Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@ruby-lang.org> wrote:
> |For the next stable release of Ruby (with shift() fixed), will these two C
> |calls still be valid:
> |
> |    len = (long) RARRAY (someArray)->len;
> |    obj = rb_ary_entry (someArray, i);

> Yes.

> 							matz.