From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2003-05-28T17:15:20+09:00
Subject: Re: Binary Tree vs. Hash


"Mauricio Fern�ndez" <batsman.geo@yahoo.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:20030528053926.GA20904@student.ei.uni-stuttgart.de...
> We cannot optimize w/ the @sorted flag because Array is used for two
> different purposes:
>  * poor man's set (sorting would help here for include? and the like)
>  * plain old array (you don't want sorting as you expect to find one
>    element at the index you inserted it)
>
> Unless we create 2 classes specifically for these 2 different semantics,
> nothing can be done.

Thanks for pointing this out with so few words!

> So if anything, the first step would be creating a Set class. Set
> objects could be hinted on creation whether to use internally a
> sorted array, a hash ( object => true ), etc, depending on the desired
> complexity and space/time trade-off.

Yes. Apart from that I'd prefer different classes over a flag at
construction time.  It's more OO and you need several classes for the
implementation anyway.

Cheers

    robert