Re: [PATCH] Implement rehashing for associative arrays (Re: speeding up hash_search?)

[Chet Ramey]

On 4/20/20 5:50 PM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 05:12:28PM -0400, George Jones wrote:
>> No real opinion on syntax.
>>
>> Using something existing:
>>
>>     declare -A foo[SIZE]
>>
>> seems sensible, especially if there was no semantic meaning (I'm not a fan
>> of syntax without semantics .... clutter).
> 
> That's pretty C-like, and I don't have any strong dislike of it, but I
> feel I should point out that users will need to quote the final argument
> if it contains square brackets, just like with unset 'a[i]'.

If the code to skip over it didn't already exist, I wouldn't consider it.

> Another choice would be a more shell-like syntax:
> 
> declare -s size -A foo=(...)

That's definitely more consistent with the rest of declare's options.

> I'm curious whether the size has to be specified up front when the array
> is declared, or can be adjusted on the fly. 

It could be adjusted on the fly, I suppose, but there would never really
be a reason to do it unless the size were being reduced. Otherwise, it's
ok to just let the array grow automatically.

> The shell-like syntax feels
> more natural if the size is being adjusted, since you can write
> 
> declare -s new_size foo
> 
> without needing to specify the -A again.  But it's not a huge difference.

This is a good point.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/