Re: Associative arrays, structured namespaces

[Bruce Stephens <b.stephens@isode.com>]

Zefram <zefram@tao.co.uk> writes:

> Bruce Stephens wrote:
> >This strikes me as an excellent idea.  Presumably the implementation
> >is similar to that of associative arrays, though?  
> 
> No.  The way it's done in Elate, the shell just treats the structured
> variable name as an opaque string.  It's only convention that interprets
> the name as having structure.  Associative arrays is a completely
> separate issue.

Yes, I wasn't thinking clearly.  I was thinking that adding a SET
function to shell.path (which would be called shell.SET, I suppose)
and all that kind of functionality would be harder without regarding
things as separate associated arrays, but I'm clearly wrong: it's
still dead easy with a single namespace, because you know exactly what
you're looking for.

Supposing zsh has a hash table of parameter names which pointed at
values; couldn't the hash just be replaced by a btree or something?
Wouldn't that provide enough to reasonably efficiently produce all
variables beginning with some prefix?  

Probably you're right, though: associative arrays ought to be done
specially, if they're done at all.  Come to think of it, having an
associative array very_long_prefix.put_keys_next.* would probably be
too expensive done as a set of variables.  Yeah, you're definitely
right: keep things simple.