On Wed, Dec 02, 2009 at 03:32:47PM -0500, Anurag S. Maskey wrote: > Michael Hunter wrote: > >>You mean you prefer that the walk always be sorted without having to > >>specify the flag or changing the order of objects in the files > > [...] > >The third sentence makes the performance argument (which I thought > >ya'all would bring up from the beginning). Given the length of this > >list and the use of the API I don't think performance is a strong > >enough reason to increase the complexity by an order of magnitude. > I didn't explicitly say performance, but I did mention that keeping > the objects sorted in the .conf files will make writes more > complicated. It could require that nvlist be sorted (I don't know > the innards of nvlists). That implementation is much more complex > than the addition of the flag and the flag also gives consumers > freedom in how they want to walk the objects. With the addition of > vnics, aggrs, etc in the future, the list could be much longer.
So it seems to me we have three choices: a) store the objects sorted alphabetically, no flag needed, walks are by default sorted alphabetically b) store the objects as-created, but always sort alphabetically when walking (except for wlans if priority order is requested); no flag needed. c) store the objects as-created, no sorting by default, have flag to request alphabetic sorting I think (a) and (c) both add complexity. (b) is probably the simplest, but results in unnecessary extra work (the qsort) being done in some cases. I don't have a *strong* preference, but I would lean toward option (b). Each of the three options has a down side; the down side of that one (doing extra work in some cases) seems the most tolerable to me. > >I havn't read a response from you to Renee about the ordering but I > >agree that straight alpha including the type namne isn't exactly what > >we want. > The type name is not compared, but the type enum. In the enum, the > link comes before the interface, so that links are listed before the > interfaces. I also included sample outputs in the response to her > email. Yep, and the sample outputs he sent were sorted as I thought they should be, so I'm happy with the way that works. -renee
