Re: My thoughts on GRing

[Joshua N Pritikin <vishnu pobox com>]

On Sat, Dec 21, 2002 at 03:40:42AM +0100, Tim Janik wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Nov 2002, Owen Taylor wrote:
> > Is it worth the pain of deprecating GQueue and adding GRing?
> > I don't think so. Deprecation is expensive both in terms of:
> >
> >  - Requiring people to change their code
> >  - Confusing people until all vestiges of the deprecated method
> >    are removed.
> >
> > I just don't see the benefits of GRing as being worth these
> > costs.
> 
> you simply haven't been infected by it's convenience even over normal
> lists yet ;)

Yah.  It's like this: The advantage of using NULL as a zero length list
is subtle but important.  Simiarly, the advantages of rings over GList &
GQueue are also a little bit subtle.

> the two disadvantages i see for GRing over GList are:
> - GList is widely deployed and nailed in API where GRing isn't

But what is the _perfect_ data structure?  GSList is perfect,
meaning that i can't imagine how to improve it significantly.
On the other hand, GQueue is clearly sub-optimal.  The idealist
in me doesn't even want to touch GQueue.

> - you run code into endless loops if you do ring = ring->next instead
>   of ring = ring_walk (ring, head) in a loop. however this should be
>   easy to diagnose and fix (and i personally haven't run into this
>   accident even once yet).

i actually made this mistake once.  Yes, it was easy to recognize
and fix.

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