Re: POC: converting Lists into arrays

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: David Rowley <david(dot)rowley(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>
Cc: Jesper Pedersen <jesper(dot)pedersen(at)redhat(dot)com>, Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: POC: converting Lists into arrays
Date: 2019-07-16 03:07:38
Message-ID: 2420.1563246458@sss.pgh.pa.us
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David Rowley <david(dot)rowley(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> The only thoughts I have so far here are that it's a shame that the
> function got called list_qsort() and not just list_sort(). I don't
> see why callers need to know anything about the sort algorithm that's
> being used.

Meh. list_qsort() is quicksort only to the extent that qsort()
is quicksort, which in our current implementation is a bit of a
lie already --- and, I believe, it's much more of a lie in some
versions of libc. I don't really think of either name as promising
anything about the underlying sort algorithm. What they do share
is an API based on a callback comparison function, and if you are
looking for uses of those, it's a lot easier to grep for "qsort"
than some more-generic term.

regards, tom lane

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