Re: ‘Super Sub’ multidimensional arrays

[Sean Cole (Pi)]

Richard and Bob

Correct! In everything you say. [x,y,z] is, in LC space, a single
dimensional space and especially about use case. But then you are limiting
yourself to single dimensional thinking. Here is my next point that I was
coming to, so well done for preempting me.

Going back a bit, in a traditional sense, we think of time as being a
fourth dimension, which it is, but also it isn't, depending on your POV. It
is 'a' fourth dimension, but not 'the' fourth dimension. X,Y and Z can be
thought of as our three spacial dimensions. But t (time) is separate to
spacial dimensions. Other spacial dimensions (not string theory which is
now not a thing) include but are not limited to heading/direction,
inside/outside, flip/reverse. Other dimensions not related to time or space
could be thought of as mass (G, weight (kind-of, but not really)), fields
(theoretical) and maybe energy.

Representing these in LC, ALL spacial dimensions could be held in a single
dimension (theoretically), [u,v,w,x,y,z,...]. Time in it's own dimension
[t]. Mass in it's own [m]. And so on. tObject[u,v,w,x,y,z,...][t][m][e]...

That works fine for that 'kind' of dimensional array.

Let's use IP addresses as another. A first would be our WAN (Wide Area
Network) address made up of, in simple terms, ISP, County/City, State,
Country, eg, [186,11,47,10]. Then our LAN (Local Area Network) address
which we can think of as Building, Floor, Area, Terminal, eg,
[127,4,2,103]. So far we have [186,11,47,10][127,4,2,103], 8 dimensions in
a 2 dimension array.
tAddr[tWAN1[1],tWAN1[2],tWAN1[3],tWAN1[4]][tLAN1.1,tLAN1.2,tLAN1.3,tLAN1.4]
as an example of structure.

As Richard mentioned, using [186,11,47,10][127,4,2,103] is neither better
or worse than using [186,11,47,10][127][4][2][103]. However, one may be
more useful/flexible/managable than the other. In most cases in a given WAN
location, the LAN root host address is often 127 throughout, so you might
want to link the floor number in with it, like [127,tFloorNum] and still
have the area and terminal number in seperate sub arrays. But what are the
advantages for and against.

Let's assume that a building has 100 floors, 10 areas per floor and 20
terminals per area.

If we use the [186,11,47,10][127,4,2,103] method for just this one location
with a string of tab delimited data as each ones value, we would be storing
in the keys of tAddr[186,11,47,10] 20,000 LAN addresses, 1 per line. This
makes it easier to filter in a search but using a lineOffset or scan
through for the addr's 127,99,9,19 to 127,100,10,10 would take much longer
than 127,1,9,19 to 127,2,10,10.

Using the [186,11,47,10][127,4][2][103] would be far more convoluted to
filter search depending on the method used. Access times to the value data
within this addr would be fast indeed. but getting a list of existing
terminal addresses from this method would be longer than the previous where
you simply request the keys of [186,11,47,10].

But my biggest case for Super Sub Arrays is File System Indexing. Coming
next ....

Sean


On Thu, 11 Mar 2021 at 16:35, Bob Sneidar via use-livecode <
use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:

> <soapbox>
> A well put answer to that egregious question that haunts ALL who are
> problem solvers: “Which is better?”
> A person might mean, better for your pocketbook, Long term/short term,
> better to configure, better performance, better support, better looking,
> better sounding...
>
> Really, this is a perennial problem with all people in all vocations. We
> don’t necessarily need more information, we need more understanding. Then
> we will learn to ask the right kind of questions.
> </soapbox>
>
> :-)
>
> Bob S
>
>
> On Mar 11, 2021, at 8:03 AM, Richard Gaskin via use-livecode <
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com<mailto:use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>>
> wrote:
>
> LiveCode is very flexible, giving us many options for structuring data
> according to the needs of the task at hand.  Which is "better" or "more
> useful" depends on the problem being solved.
>
> --
> Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World Systems
>
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