Re: sorted sparse containers (was Re: PDL-P: Re: Hooks for array notation (was Re: Ramblings on "baseclass" for SV etc.)

[Dan Sugalski]

At 12:14 PM 8/12/00 -0400, Bryan C. Warnock wrote:
>On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, David L. Nicol wrote:
> > Dan Sugalski wrote:
> >
> > > Strong typing and sparse arrays are orthogonal--no reason we 
> shouldn't use
> > > them if someone does:
> > >
> > >    $foo[time]
> > >
> > > or something of the sort. (People like huge arrays with few scalars in
> > > them too... :)
> > >
> > >                                         Dan
> >
> > And for the inexperinced, arrays that are more than half undef would
> > transparently spring into existence as sparse
>
>Sounds more and more like we're creating a pseudo-array.  (The natural
>complement to a pseudo-hash.  :-)

Heh. It's as real an array as a hash with a fixed set of keys. That some 
(or most) of the array elements don't exist is a detail of implementation. :)

Pseudo-hashes were a clever hack, and quite useful, but they exposed too 
much of their internal representation. I'd like to avoid that if possible.

                                        Dan

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