skip lists

[Richard Gaskin]

Geoff Canyon wrote:

 > I'm curious why you'd want to do this? As far as I can see, the
 > advantages of linked lists, and the negatives of the alternatives,
 > are both negated by aspects inherent in the LC scripting system.

Because I'm a madman. :)

For production use I'll probably go with SQLite on the project I need 
this for, but now and then I stumble across data storage methods I can 
write in LC that have a modest advantage or two over alternatives.

Rarely is the advantage performance, but with the overhead of b-trees 
and the externals interface you'd be surprised what very specialized 
data stores in even a VHL like LC can do.

So now and then on the weekends I tinker with alternatives as a sort of 
odd hobby, dreaming of a day I may come up with another data store that 
both outperforms SQLite for what I need to do and has the features I'm 
looking for.

And looking around on the Web, I've been surprised so many others share 
the same hobby - there are many libraries for even simple things like 
flat file stores written in dozens of languages.

Not surprisingly, by the time I add features like aggregate comparisons 
to a data store, I find myself going back to SQLite. :)

But still I ponder, and learn, and even when I abandon one of my 
experiments I always learn things that make using off-the-shelf data 
stores more efficient.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  Follow me on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys