Re: [Caml-list] How to do this properly with OCaml?

[Thomas Fischbacher <Thomas.Fischbacher@Physik.Uni-Muenchen.DE>]

On Sat, 23 Jul 2005, Stephane Glondu wrote:

> > What if I have operations that add and remove elements on the heap in
> > random order (so that the heap sometimes has to shrink), and I want
> > (1) that every element which was removed from the heap and is otherwise
> > inaccessible can be reclaimed by GC,
> 
> When you want to "remove" an element, you can put another (random) value 
> from the same array at its place so that it can be garbage collected. If 
> the remaining heap is empty (i.e. there is no other value to pick), you 
> replace the Fill a with Empty n.

I think that this will not work.

If I duplicate entries to fill up holes, and later on remove a
legitimate entry whose duplicates fill holes from the heap, I have to 
introduce extra bookkeeping so that the other placeholder copies of that 
entry are replaced as well - otherwise it could not be reclaimed by GC.

> > and (2) that removing a single  
> > element from the heap does not require copying the underlying Array?
> 
> This is a matter of algorithmics, isn't it?

To some extent, it is a matter of the type system getting in the way of 
algorithmics, I fear.

-- 
regards,               tf@cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de              (o_
 Thomas Fischbacher -  http://www.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~tf  //\
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