Re: [GNU ELPA] New package: tam

[Lynn Winebarger]

On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 3:26 PM Adam Porter <adam@alphapapa.net> wrote:
>
> Hi Lynn,
>
> This looks like a very interesting package.  My only feedback is
> trivial: that the names of the functions could omit "table" from their
> names, because it would make them more concise; and since they all
> operate on tables, it doesn't seem necessary for their names to specify
> that.
>
Thanks for taking a look.  The reason is that I was thinking about
adding functionality for pools of preallocated objects that leverage
the tables for tracking which objects are actually being used.  I went
ahead and wrote some basic support for such pools in the latest
version pushed.

It's possible the two data structures (tables and pools) could be
unified, but I want the tables to be able to track arbitrary data
associated with some nominal limited resource - the slots are
preallocated, but any other associated data is not.  For the scheduler
example, I may allow 24 simultaneous async processes to run, but I
could construct hundreds or thousands of job specifications that are
waiting to get scheduled.  I might use the pool object to pre-allocate
some largish number of those to avoid any allocation in a process
sentinel.

Of course, this introduces the possibility of use-after-free and using
unallocated objects (they are represented by simple indexes), so this
structure should only be used with appropriate caution.

Lynn