Re: POC: converting Lists into arrays

On 7/15/19 11:07 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> 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.

I agree with David -- list_sort() is better. I don't think "sort" is
such a common stem that searching is a big issue, especially with modern
code indexing tools.

--
-David
david(at)pgmasters(dot)net