Re: [HACKERS] binding table

>
> I have renamed the BindingTable to ShmemIndex.  Binding table made no
> sense to me, and the table is an index of shared memory structures, so
> the new name should be clearer.
>
> --
> Bruce Momjian                          |  830 Blythe Avenue
> maillist@candle.pha.pa.us              |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026
>   +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  (610) 353-9879(w)
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>


I kinda wish you hadn't. These kinds of style changes impose a certain cost
in terms of merge issues and add a (perhaps small) bit of risk of introducing
bugs without any improvement in the product that can be detected by the
user.

Btw, the name "BindingTable" is derived from the lisp terminology where
a variable is composed of a storage location and a "binding" of a symbol to
refer to that location. As much of postgres was initially written in lisp,
this is a fairly natural name.

As it happens, the shared memory structure (formerly) known as BindingTable
really is used in a way that closely resembles lisp style bindings. When
you want to create something in shared memory (eg the lock table), you
allocate a name in the binding table and then hang all the datastructures
onto the name.

Finally, I think the name ShmemIndex lends itself to confusion with table
indexes etc...

-dg

David Gould            dg@illustra.com           510.628.3783 or 510.305.9468
Informix Software  (No, really)         300 Lakeside Drive  Oakland, CA 94612
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