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Subject: Re: binary search?
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1999/03/10
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3130021426931539@naggum.no>

* Johan Kullstam <kullstam@ne.mediaone.net>
| e.g., if you need to add or remove stuff in the middle, it's easy and
| fast using a list structure but somewhat more involved with a vector.

  well, I'd argue the exact opposite, just as I'd argue that pushing values
  on vectors will fill-pointers are more efficient than pushing values on
  lists in many cases.

  besides, if you worry about timing in the binary-search-on-lists case,
  you also probably worry enough about it to write functions that are
  efficient destructive operations on vectors-with-fill-pointers.

  in brief, I think Sam's 10% speedup is a case of becoming satisfied with
  an optimization.  often, much more dramatic wins can be obtained by doing
  something _very_ different than just tuning a particular choice.

#:Erik