Re: POC: converting Lists into arrays

On 7/15/19 11:07 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> David Rowley <david.rowley@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
>> The only thoughts I have so far here are that it's a shame that the
>> function got called list_qsort() and not just list_sort().  I don't
>> see why callers need to know anything about the sort algorithm that's
>> being used.
> 
> Meh.  list_qsort() is quicksort only to the extent that qsort()
> is quicksort, which in our current implementation is a bit of a
> lie already --- and, I believe, it's much more of a lie in some
> versions of libc.  I don't really think of either name as promising
> anything about the underlying sort algorithm.  What they do share
> is an API based on a callback comparison function, and if you are
> looking for uses of those, it's a lot easier to grep for "qsort"
> than some more-generic term.

I agree with David -- list_sort() is better.  I don't think "sort" is 
such a common stem that searching is a big issue, especially with modern 
code indexing tools.

-- 
-David
david@pgmasters.net