Re: why not

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

If by "Dequeue" you mean "Double Ended Queue", then I disagree. A Dequeue is
a special case of a double-linked list. Data may only enter/exit from the
ends. What if you want to insert data into the middle? Strictly speaking,
the only elements that should be visible in a Dequeue would be those at the
ends, so how do you scan the entire structure? Relax the definition? By
doing so, you just move closer and closer to a doubly-linked list.

That's why I would contend that a doubly-linked list would be a good basic
starting point. You can get all the behavior of a stack, queue, dequeue and
singly-linked list out of it just by ignoring features. You get some small
additional penalty of maintaining two links per node where on some
structures you'd only need one, but in my experience it is negligable in
most applications.

A doubly-linked list and a map would cover a huge percentage of the usual
data structure usages. Anything more could be discussed and added as a
perceived need arose.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Mark Biggar" <mark.a.biggar@home.com> wrote in message
news:3BE0F8AE.3B7E5C70@home.com...
>
> I not sure here.  I thing that a list type is too low level, the actual
> ADT that you want is a Dequeue ADT not Double-linked List ADT.
>
> Just like we already have bounded and unbounded strings, we should
> have bounded and unbounded Dequeues.  The fact that the later
> can be implemented as a Double-linked list is an implementation
> detail.