Re: Any comments on priority queue patch (Bug #107182)

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Sat, 2003-03-01 at 00:15, Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Has anybody taken a look at the patch I wrote to implement a simple
> priority queue for glib?  It's bug 107082 on gnome bugzilla.
> 
> Feedback would be appreciated.

I don't have any specific comments on the patch or on the
idea of adding priority queues to GLib, but to give some
background :

 * We haven't been that friendly to new data structures
   recently; the experience is that G[S]List, GArray,
   GHashTable work pretty well for a wide set of things,
   and the rest of GLib's data structures tends not
   to used (GRel anyone?)

 * The relevant criteria for a new data structure would,
   in my opinion be:

   - Does it offer significant (big-o) performance 
     benefits for a common operation, or allow some 
     operation that would be really hard to code without 
     the data structure? I don't a constant factor 
     performance improvement would ever justify adding
     a data structure.

   - Would it be useful to a significant fraction of
     applications?

Oh yeah ... patches should always be attached as attachments
rather than pasted into the bug report ... much easier
to handle that way.

Regards,
                                  Owen