On Thu, Aug 23, 2001 at 01:22:00AM -0700, Brian Pane wrote:
> Greg Stein wrote:
> >I would posit those operations are not needed. The notes or userdata are for
> >specific bits of information. It is not a simple collection that you can
> >iterate over. In fact, since you can't know the values of each key, you
> >cannot perform a useful iteration nor do a useful merge.
> >
> Hmmm...I think I agree. I do have some cases in which the ability to
> iterate over the notes table is essential for sharing extensible sets
> of data among modules, but they depend on naming conventions for the
> elements in the table (so that the collaborating modules know what elements
> are relevant and can interpret the values meaningfully). But it's a
> lot cleaner to store this data in an appliation-specific data structure
> that in turn is stored as a userdata element in the pool.
Yup. You could store an app-specific hash table in the userdata, and assign
specific semantics to the use of that structure (including things like
arbitrary scanning of its contents). That would allow for the operations
you're thinking of.
But just iterating over the userdata in a pool could be a problem. Heck...
the key might not even be a valid pointer :-)
Cheers,
-g
--
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/
