Re: Using Red-Black Trees

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Alex Mentis" <foo@invalid.invalid> wrote in message 
news:ibueau$aac$1@news.eternal-september.org...
...
> In the case of the OP, he wanted a specific data structure (rb tree).

Unless you are a student, worrying about a specific data structure is silly 
in 99% of the cases. What you care about is that you use a data structure 
which has sufficient performance for your app. One presumes that 
implementations will provide high-performance implementations, tuned to the 
specific target.

Programming to the standard containers is the easiest first step. In the 
rare case where the performance isn't sufficient, then a custom data 
structure will be needed -- but it is almost certain that you'll need to 
program that structure yourself (because you'll want to squeeze out any 
overhead from features that you don't need).

> Since the ARM doesn't specify exactly how a container must be
> implemented, he could go sleuthing through the library code like this
> to find out, and in this case he would be lucky enough to determine
> that there is, in fact, a container using rb trees, so hooray!

Or he could just use the standard containers, and find out that in fact the 
performance is good enough for his application, so hooray, he doesn't need 
to worry about it further. I don't know what data structures this newsreader 
and browser use, but they're good enough for the application, so why should 
I care?? Same goes for the standard containers.

                              Randy.