> >I believe this alternative has been discussed once in a while. Which > >ranges an operation affects is a log(N) operation on the character > >position (binary search), and the ranges can also be kept sorted among > >themselves on (primary key start position, secondary key end > >position), so that finding out the victim ranges is also a log(N). > >Admittedly, log(N) tends to be larger than 1, and certainly larger > >than 0 :-) Also, using UTF-8 (or any variable length encoding) is > >a pain since you can't any more just happily offset to the data. > > This strikes me as an excellent candidate for a custom scalar type. I like > the idea, and it could be really useful in some circumstances, but I'd not > want to burden the default scalar with the code for this. Agreed. -- $jhi++; # http://www.iki.fi/jhi/ # There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'. # It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen
