OpenEuphoria

Re: Standard library praise and challenge

• Posted by Insolor Mar 01, 2012
• 2097 views

Today I looked inside std/sequence.e and have seen this:

public function add_item(object needle, sequence haystack, integer pOrder = 1) 
	if find(needle, haystack) then 
		return haystack 
	end if 
	switch pOrder do 
		case ADD_PREPEND then 
			return prepend(haystack, needle) 
 
		case ADD_APPEND then 
			return append(haystack, needle) 
 
		case ADD_SORT_UP then 
			return stdsort:sort(append(haystack, needle)) 
 
		case ADD_SORT_DOWN then 
			return stdsort:sort(append(haystack, needle), stdsort:DESCENDING) 
 
		case else 
			error:crash("sequence.e:add_item() invalid Order argument '%d'", pOrder) 
	end switch 
 
	return haystack 
end function 

Why not to replace this

stdsort:sort(append(haystack, needle))

with some sort of binary insertion function? This approach would be is less reliable (eg. function will not know if the sequence have a proper order, presorting will be up to a user), but it would be much faster on long sequences.

P.S. something like this:

eu:insert(haystack,needle,math:abs(search:binary_search(needle,haystack)))