David Menendez wrote:
Keean Schupke writes:
HList can do O(log n) by the way, if the labels have order, you can implement a binary search tree of labels (Of course all the accessor functions would need to be rewritten).
The idea of writing a type-level balanced binary search tree fills me with an uncertain mixture of excitement and dread. Particularly if you want to be able to compare records for equality.
Hmm... You have to write and define what you mean by equality for normal HList records anyway. As you need to ignore the order of elements the equality test is effectively: a == b if (a `subset` b) and (b `subset` a) The test for "a subset b" tests if each element in a exists in b. With an ordered tree, the labels must be in the same order, so the equality just has to compare elements is a consistant (say pre-order) way. In the end HList records were written as they are for clarity in the paper, and not really as a number-crunching implementation. I find them fast enough for database work, where the records represent the query (in terms of projections) and the result table in a type safe way... Infact my simple DB library goes quite a way beyond what HaskellDB can do, mainy due to the complex type-mechanics being hidden inside the HList/record library. Keean.