On 2013-10-24 15:51, John Gilmore wrote: > Tony writes that you just can't binary search a variable length table, > and this is certainly true if what he means is that you cannot search > a table the length of which changes while you are searching it. > > You can, however, search a table that varies in length on different > occasions. How not? > I understand he meant a table containing entries of nonuniform lengths.
On 2013-10-24 15:43, Tony Thigpen wrote:> After a couple of posts about my post, I will go back to my point. > ... > You just can't binary search a variable length table. > Perhaps ... On 2013-10-24 11:29, Blaicher, Christopher Y. wrote: > ... > The second method used a binary chop of the data then scanned for the next > entry. It was ugly, but it did its job. There are lots of limitations to it. > Somewhat elliptical. I assume he means that from any point in the table, which may be in the interior of an entry of a priori unknown length, there's a method for locating the beginning and end of that entry, perhaps a reserved character such as BLANK, NUL, LF, ... I think that should be feasible. -- gil
