Re: List Strawman JC01

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <3C110606.A37E9D10@boeing.com>, Jeffrey Carter says...
>Perhaps we were talking past each other here. I was discussing this
>particular package as a vehicle to allow discussion of alternative names
>and items that are still undecided while presenting everything we had
>decided. Since the name of the package and the structure and contents of

Good. That's precisely what I was hoping we were doing. I guess my problem was
indeed that I was zoning in on individual things rather than considering the
naming scheme as a whole.

>Every data structures text I've seen describes the abstract concept of a
>list as an ordered sequence of values with one value considered the
>first value, another the next value, and so on to the last value. I

I'd agree with the first part, but not with the second, at least not for a
general bidirectional list like we have. 

I know some texts say "linked-list" when they mean "singly-linked-list". Also,
some authors may not be as careful about using confusing terminology like
"first" and "last" for ends like we are being. Also, sometimes people come into
reading with a preconcieved idea about things, and end up not comming away with
the precise concept that the author intended. And sometimes authors are just
plain wrong (it happens).

Anyway, I'm not sure where you got this impression. But I can assure you that I
have been "classicly trained" in Computer Science (BS and MS), have had to read
many such texts for no less than 5 different courses that covered this kind of
material, and did not come away with that impression. 

>nor have I found any online. [However, see pp 70 and 72 of file
>08Pointers.ppt available at
>
>http://cs.calvin.edu/books/c++/ds/1e/NewPPSlides2/

I did take a look at that. He does indeed use the unfortunate labels "First" and
"Last", which seem to be causing you so much trouble. This could be
carelessness, but I think he did it to show progression from his previous
singly-linked list example. Doing otherwise would have made it look too new. But
his heart is indeed in the right place, as he makes a point of referring to this
structure as "bidirectional" and "symmetricly-linked". I've never heard the
latter term before, and couldn't find anyone else using it, but it just about
sums things up perfectly.

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T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

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