Re: List container strawman

[Darren New <dnew@san.rr.com>]

Nick Roberts wrote:
> Doing the equivalent of what my example procedure Normalize_Names did using
> inserts and deletes with an iterator would have ended up with code that was
> more difficult to program, more difficult to read, slower in execution, and
> (I think) more wasteful of memory. Showing this was the true purpose of my
> example. Admittedly, I really need to add more detail, but it's finding the
> time :-(

Using sequences like this when the problem is expressed in terms of a
loop over all elements makes sense. Using sequences when the problem is
expressed in other forms may not. If your list is a list of characters
that you're trying to parse, for example, matching up parens or doing
reg-exp sorts of stuff (yes, I know you'd use strings) then only doing
reads *or* writes, only going in one direction doesn't make good sense.
If you have an ordered list and you want to insert an element in the
right place, copying the entire list to do so isn't very efficient.

-- 
Darren New 
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