From: ahoward <ahoward@...>
Date: 2003-05-28T00:48:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Binary Tree vs. Hash

On Tue, 27 May 2003, Robert Klemme wrote:

> IMHO that's overly complicating Array. An Array is simply a sequence of
> items.  Period.

on paper - sure.  but in reality we have:


  [ ] new & * + -- << <=> == === [ ] [ ]= | assoc at clear
  collect collect! compact compact! concat delete delete_at
  delete_if each each_index empty? eql? fill first flatten
  flatten! include? index indexes indices join last length map!
  nitems pack pop push rassoc reject! replace reverse reverse!
  reverse_each rindex shift size slice slice! sort sort! to_a
  to_ary to_s uniq uniq! unshift

  mixins
  Enumerable:
    collect, detect, each_with_index, entries,
    find, find_all, grep, include?, map, max,
    member?, min, reject, select, sort, to_a


*much* more than a sequence of items.

what would be the issue if Enumerable was optimized for containers, like
Array, which could support random access and binary searches?  the same
methods would exist - they would simply be faster.  admittedly this is less
'general' but optimization for such a heavily used container as the Array
makes sense IHMO, espcially when it could be done in such a way to be
completely backward compatible while giving a speed increase to practially
every ruby program ever written...

-a



>
> To have a sorted array I'd have either
>
>  - a sub class of Array (like SortedArray) that overrides modifying
> operations to ensure this invariant (or do it dependend on the flag you
> mentioned) or
>
>  - a SortedArray delegating all non modifying calls to an array and
> overriding modifying methods.
>
> I think this is the more component oriented approach.
>
> Regards
>
>     robert
>
>

-a
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