Re: FIFO stack
Am 26.10.2011, 18:00 Uhr, schrieb Dominic Jones dominic.jo...@qmul.ac.uk: Also an plain array is a good stack. :) I'd rather not use a plain array because (I assume) that when I push or pop using arrays, a swap array is created to resize the original. If this is not the case, then an array will certainly do. -Dominic Someone could have told me that the topic wasn't FILO stacks ^^. A FILO stack can use a dynamic array with assumeSafeAppend, which avoids the copy by telling the runtime that I definitely wont overwrite anything valuable in the array when I write pop(); push(...); (There are no other array slices operating on the same data block)
Re: FIFO stack
Dominic Jones wrote: Hello, I was looking for a FIFO stack in std.containers but only found SList and Array which both appear to essentially operate as LIFO stacks. Is there any standard container with which I can push items on to a list, then later pop them off from the bottom of that list? If so, then how? Thank you, Dominic Jones The Array can be used as both LIFO and FIFO structure.
Re: FIFO stack
To conclude the matter regarding the absence of a FIFO stack in the standard library and the not so good alternative of arrays (in particular where there are a significant number of push-pops and the maximum length is not initially known): Does anyone in-the-know know if something like DList (a doubly linked list) will be added to std.containers in the near future? I, for one, would very much appreciate its implementation in the standard library. Regards, Dominic
Re: FIFO stack
Ary Manzana a...@esperanto.org.ar wrote in message news:j89gle$9nn$1...@digitalmars.com... On 10/26/11 1:28 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote: On Wednesday, October 26, 2011 09:00 Dominic Jones wrote: Also an plain array is a good stack. :) I'd rather not use a plain array because (I assume) that when I push or pop using arrays, a swap array is created to resize the original. If this is not the case, then an array will certainly do. -Dominic Not exactly. If you want to know more about how arrays work, you should read this: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dcollections/wiki/ArrayArticle It's a great read. As for using an array as a stack, you can do it with a wrapper struct, but using it by itself would result in a lot more reallocations than you'd want, as discussed here: https://www.semitwist.com/articles/article/view/don-t-use-arrays-as-stacks - Jonathan M Davis I think that if you have to read an article that long, with all the explanations of the different caveats a programmer can bump to when using them, to understand how arrays and slices work something must be wrong. Things should be simpler. FWIW, my article can be summarized with a line that's [poorly] located right around the middle (annotations added): Slicing an array is fast [no allocation or copying], and appending is usually fast [usually no allocation or copying], but slicing the end off and then appending is slow [does an allocate and copy]. I guess I have a habit of making things longer than they need to be ;)
Re: FIFO stack
Dominic Jones dominic.jo...@qmul.ac.uk wrote in message news:j89arh$2ua3$1...@digitalmars.com... Also an plain array is a good stack. :) I'd rather not use a plain array because (I assume) that when I push or pop using arrays, a swap array is created to resize the original. If this is not the case, then an array will certainly do. -Dominic The matter of using D's arrays as a LIFO is discussed the other branch of this thread (ie, you can do it, but it's slow because a pop then push will reallocate and copy), but as far as a FIFO: That may actually be reasonable to do as an array: Decreasing the length of an array (from either end) is a trivial matter that never allocates or copies. Appending to the end *usually* doesn't involve allocating. So the only issue I see it that the FIFO will march across memory. I guess that's probably not a problem as long as the GC knows it can reclaim the stuff you've popped off (Does it do that? Ie, if you do x = x[10..$]; and there's no other references, is the GC smart enough to reclaim those first ten spots? I guess I would assume so.)
Re: FIFO stack
Nick Sabalausky , dans le message (digitalmars.D.learn:30309), a écrit : Dominic Jones dominic.jo...@qmul.ac.uk wrote in message news:j89arh$2ua3$1...@digitalmars.com... Also an plain array is a good stack. :) I'd rather not use a plain array because (I assume) that when I push or pop using arrays, a swap array is created to resize the original. If this is not the case, then an array will certainly do. -Dominic The matter of using D's arrays as a LIFO is discussed the other branch of this thread (ie, you can do it, but it's slow because a pop then push will reallocate and copy), but as far as a FIFO: That may actually be reasonable to do as an array: Decreasing the length of an array (from either end) is a trivial matter that never allocates or copies. Appending to the end *usually* doesn't involve allocating. So the only issue I see it that the FIFO will march across memory. I guess that's probably not a problem as long as the GC knows it can reclaim the stuff you've popped off (Does it do that? Ie, if you do x = x[10..$]; and there's no other references, is the GC smart enough to reclaim those first ten spots? I guess I would assume so.) As far as I understand, if there is a pointer to an allocated memory block, the GC keeps the whole memory block. So the data at the beginning of x will be kept as long as x is not reallocated (but x will be reallocated at some point, because it can't walk across memory indefinitely, unless the GC is particularly efficient at avoiding reallocation). AFAIC, if I had to design a FIFO, I would use a circular array to avoid constant growing and reallocation of the array.
Re: FIFO stack
On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:00:31 -0400, Nick Sabalausky a@a.a wrote: Dominic Jones dominic.jo...@qmul.ac.uk wrote in message news:j89arh$2ua3$1...@digitalmars.com... Also an plain array is a good stack. :) I'd rather not use a plain array because (I assume) that when I push or pop using arrays, a swap array is created to resize the original. If this is not the case, then an array will certainly do. -Dominic The matter of using D's arrays as a LIFO is discussed the other branch of this thread (ie, you can do it, but it's slow because a pop then push will reallocate and copy), but as far as a FIFO: That may actually be reasonable to do as an array: Decreasing the length of an array (from either end) is a trivial matter that never allocates or copies. Appending to the end *usually* doesn't involve allocating. So the only issue I see it that the FIFO will march across memory. I guess that's probably not a problem as long as the GC knows it can reclaim the stuff you've popped off (Does it do that? Ie, if you do x = x[10..$]; and there's no other references, is the GC smart enough to reclaim those first ten spots? I guess I would assume so.) No, the granularity is on memory blocks. Once you slice off those first 10 elements, and you have no references to them, they become dead weight. But, as you append to the end, it will eventually outgrow its block, and the dead weight is *not* carried to the new block, so it will then be reclaimed. There are exceptions (such as when a block tacks on more pages). -Steve
Re: FIFO stack
On 10/27/11 8:38 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote: Ary Manzanaa...@esperanto.org.ar wrote in message news:j89gle$9nn$1...@digitalmars.com... On 10/26/11 1:28 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote: On Wednesday, October 26, 2011 09:00 Dominic Jones wrote: Also an plain array is a good stack. :) I'd rather not use a plain array because (I assume) that when I push or pop using arrays, a swap array is created to resize the original. If this is not the case, then an array will certainly do. -Dominic Not exactly. If you want to know more about how arrays work, you should read this: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dcollections/wiki/ArrayArticle It's a great read. As for using an array as a stack, you can do it with a wrapper struct, but using it by itself would result in a lot more reallocations than you'd want, as discussed here: https://www.semitwist.com/articles/article/view/don-t-use-arrays-as-stacks - Jonathan M Davis I think that if you have to read an article that long, with all the explanations of the different caveats a programmer can bump to when using them, to understand how arrays and slices work something must be wrong. Things should be simpler. FWIW, my article can be summarized with a line that's [poorly] located right around the middle (annotations added): Slicing an array is fast [no allocation or copying], and appending is usually fast [usually no allocation or copying], but slicing the end off and then appending is slow [does an allocate and copy]. I guess I have a habit of making things longer than they need to be ;) Nah, I liked your article, it assumes I know nothing and I like that. Maybe I did was exaggerating...
Re: FIFO stack
Ary Manzana a...@esperanto.org.ar wrote in message news:j8buhd$1s80$1...@digitalmars.com... On 10/27/11 8:38 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote: Ary Manzanaa...@esperanto.org.ar wrote in message news:j89gle$9nn$1...@digitalmars.com... On 10/26/11 1:28 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote: On Wednesday, October 26, 2011 09:00 Dominic Jones wrote: Also an plain array is a good stack. :) I'd rather not use a plain array because (I assume) that when I push or pop using arrays, a swap array is created to resize the original. If this is not the case, then an array will certainly do. -Dominic Not exactly. If you want to know more about how arrays work, you should read this: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dcollections/wiki/ArrayArticle It's a great read. As for using an array as a stack, you can do it with a wrapper struct, but using it by itself would result in a lot more reallocations than you'd want, as discussed here: https://www.semitwist.com/articles/article/view/don-t-use-arrays-as-stacks - Jonathan M Davis I think that if you have to read an article that long, with all the explanations of the different caveats a programmer can bump to when using them, to understand how arrays and slices work something must be wrong. Things should be simpler. FWIW, my article can be summarized with a line that's [poorly] located right around the middle (annotations added): Slicing an array is fast [no allocation or copying], and appending is usually fast [usually no allocation or copying], but slicing the end off and then appending is slow [does an allocate and copy]. I guess I have a habit of making things longer than they need to be ;) Nah, I liked your article, it assumes I know nothing and I like that. Maybe I did was exaggerating... Thanks. But you did have a good point, in fact it had already been nagging at me a little bit anyway: There's a very simple summary of the matter, but I didn't get around to spitting it out until halfway through. I've added a little thing to the top and feel a lot better about it now.
FIFO stack
Hello, I was looking for a FIFO stack in std.containers but only found SList and Array which both appear to essentially operate as LIFO stacks. Is there any standard container with which I can push items on to a list, then later pop them off from the bottom of that list? If so, then how? Thank you, Dominic Jones
Re: FIFO stack
On Wednesday, October 26, 2011 08:58:12 Dominic Jones wrote: Hello, I was looking for a FIFO stack in std.containers but only found SList and Array which both appear to essentially operate as LIFO stacks. Is there any standard container with which I can push items on to a list, then later pop them off from the bottom of that list? If so, then how? Nope. std.container is far from complete at the moment. It will eventually have all of the sundry containers that you'd expect in a standard library, but they haven't all been implemented yet, primarily because the custom allocator scheme that Phobos will be using hasn't been completely sorted out yet, and Andrei Alexandrescu (who is the primary designer and implementor of std.container) doesn't want to write them all and then have to go and change them all to be able to use custom allocators. In the meantime, you can take a look at http://dsource.org/projects/dcollections - Jonathan M Davis
Re: FIFO stack
On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:15:37 +0200, Simen Kjaeraas simen.kja...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:58:12 +0200, Dominic Jones dominic.jo...@qmul.ac.uk wrote: Hello, I was looking for a FIFO stack in std.containers but only found SList and Array which both appear to essentially operate as LIFO stacks. Is there any standard container with which I can push items on to a list, then later pop them off from the bottom of that list? If so, then how? No such thing, sorry. Though writing one should be no big challenge. No such thing that is, if you don't want to use dCollections: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dcollections -- Simen
Re: FIFO stack
Am 26.10.2011, 17:20 Uhr, schrieb Simen Kjaeraas simen.kja...@gmail.com: On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:15:37 +0200, Simen Kjaeraas simen.kja...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:58:12 +0200, Dominic Jones dominic.jo...@qmul.ac.uk wrote: Hello, I was looking for a FIFO stack in std.containers but only found SList and Array which both appear to essentially operate as LIFO stacks. Is there any standard container with which I can push items on to a list, then later pop them off from the bottom of that list? If so, then how? No such thing, sorry. Though writing one should be no big challenge. No such thing that is, if you don't want to use dCollections: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dcollections Also an plain array is a good stack. :)
Re: FIFO stack
Also an plain array is a good stack. :) I'd rather not use a plain array because (I assume) that when I push or pop using arrays, a swap array is created to resize the original. If this is not the case, then an array will certainly do. -Dominic
Re: FIFO stack
On 10/26/11 1:28 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote: On Wednesday, October 26, 2011 09:00 Dominic Jones wrote: Also an plain array is a good stack. :) I'd rather not use a plain array because (I assume) that when I push or pop using arrays, a swap array is created to resize the original. If this is not the case, then an array will certainly do. -Dominic Not exactly. If you want to know more about how arrays work, you should read this: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dcollections/wiki/ArrayArticle It's a great read. As for using an array as a stack, you can do it with a wrapper struct, but using it by itself would result in a lot more reallocations than you'd want, as discussed here: https://www.semitwist.com/articles/article/view/don-t-use-arrays-as-stacks - Jonathan M Davis I think that if you have to read an article that long, with all the explanations of the different caveats a programmer can bump to when using them, to understand how arrays and slices work something must be wrong. Things should be simpler.
Re: FIFO stack
On Wednesday, October 26, 2011 10:38 Ary Manzana wrote: On 10/26/11 1:28 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote: On Wednesday, October 26, 2011 09:00 Dominic Jones wrote: Also an plain array is a good stack. :) I'd rather not use a plain array because (I assume) that when I push or pop using arrays, a swap array is created to resize the original. If this is not the case, then an array will certainly do. -Dominic Not exactly. If you want to know more about how arrays work, you should read this: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dcollections/wiki/ArrayArticle It's a great read. As for using an array as a stack, you can do it with a wrapper struct, but using it by itself would result in a lot more reallocations than you'd want, as discussed here: https://www.semitwist.com/articles/article/view/don-t-use-arrays-as-stack s - Jonathan M Davis I think that if you have to read an article that long, with all the explanations of the different caveats a programmer can bump to when using them, to understand how arrays and slices work something must be wrong. Things should be simpler. Perhaps. But doing so and still having them be appropriately powerful is not straightforward if it's even possible. What we have works very well overall. It's just that if you start doing stuff that can cause an array to reallocate, and you don't understand enough about how arrays and slices work, you're going to end up reallocating your arrays way too often and harm performance. So, for the most part, you can use arrays just fine without understanding everything in that article, but your code risks being less efficient. Given how much you gain from D arrays, I think whatever complexity they have is _well_ worth it. It would be nice if the complexity could be reduced without reducing their usefuless or efficiency, but I don't know how possible that is. - Jonathan M Davis
Re: FIFO stack
Ary Manzana Wrote: On 10/26/11 1:28 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote: Not exactly. If you want to know more about how arrays work, you should read this: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dcollections/wiki/ArrayArticle It's a great read. As for using an array as a stack, you can do it with a wrapper struct, but using it by itself would result in a lot more reallocations than you'd want, as discussed here: https://www.semitwist.com/articles/article/view/don-t-use-arrays-as-stacks - Jonathan M Davis I think that if you have to read an article that long, with all the explanations of the different caveats a programmer can bump to when using them, to understand how arrays and slices work something must be wrong. Things should be simpler. The thing is, it is simple. You can use them as a stack. But if performance matters to you, then you should be aware of how it operates. Or use something already built for performance for that use-case. Now it would be good if Arrays could be used for this, but that would make things more complicated, not less.
Re: FIFO stack
On 10/26/2011 07:38 PM, Ary Manzana wrote: On 10/26/11 1:28 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote: On Wednesday, October 26, 2011 09:00 Dominic Jones wrote: Also an plain array is a good stack. :) I'd rather not use a plain array because (I assume) that when I push or pop using arrays, a swap array is created to resize the original. If this is not the case, then an array will certainly do. -Dominic Not exactly. If you want to know more about how arrays work, you should read this: http://www.dsource.org/projects/dcollections/wiki/ArrayArticle It's a great read. As for using an array as a stack, you can do it with a wrapper struct, but using it by itself would result in a lot more reallocations than you'd want, as discussed here: https://www.semitwist.com/articles/article/view/don-t-use-arrays-as-stacks - Jonathan M Davis I think that if you have to read an article that long, with all the explanations of the different caveats a programmer can bump to when using them, to understand how arrays and slices work something must be wrong. Things should be simpler. You exaggerate. The word 'caveat' appears exactly once in that article. The rest are straightforward explanations, mainly about how the runtime implements D array concatenation. After reading Steve's (actually quite short) article, you know about everything described in Nick's. D arrays and slices are so powerful that they are well worth a tiny little bit of complexity. The behaviour of dynamic arrays is a good trade-off between simplicity and performance imho.
