Re^2: Index or iterate

where there are so many list items or the items are so big, that they would use too much memory to store in an array

Perhaps tie-ing is another good option for this. Then you can get all the semantics of an array for free! (from the user perspective at least)

-Thomas
"Excuse me for butting in, but I'm interrupt-driven..."

Comment on Re^2: Index or iterate - your choice

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Re^3: Index or iterate - your choice by tobyink (Canon) on Jan 27, 2021 at 23:17 UTC
I did consider including that, but by providing a tied array, you're kind of encouraging end users to treat it as any old array. So they might not consider that doing something like: `foreach my $item ( reverse @array ) { ... }` [download] Is going to impact performance way more than they might expect. If it's exposed as an iterator, then it encourages them to access items in a one-at-a-time sequential fashion. They still can slurp it all into an array, but they can't blame you when that eats up all their memory. Not saying it's never a good idea, but situations where it is aren't going to be that common. toby döt ink	[reply] [d/l]

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Re^3: Index or iterate - your choice
by tobyink (Canon) on Jan 27, 2021 at 23:17 UTC

I did consider including that, but by providing a tied array, you're kind of encouraging end users to treat it as any old array.

So they might not consider that doing something like:

foreach my $item ( reverse @array ) {
  ...
}
[download]

Is going to impact performance way more than they might expect.

If it's exposed as an iterator, then it encourages them to access items in a one-at-a-time sequential fashion. They still can slurp it all into an array, but they can't blame you when that eats up all their memory.

Not saying it's never a good idea, but situations where it is aren't going to be that common.

toby döt ink

[reply]
[d/l]