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3 points by i4cu 1914 days ago | link | parent

> EDIT: I think tables might be better overall and that the order-necessitating functionality may not be worth the trouble of alists.

I would agree. At least your examples seem to point to that.

I would suggest you flatten your data and add indexes:

  (= data (obj 1 (obj cont "get eggs")
               2 (obj cont "fix toilet")
               3 (obj cont "Build something that works in arc")  
               4 (obj cont "Research Ordered Associative Arrays")))
Then:

  (= todo  '(1 2))
  (= today '(3))
  (= done  '(4))
And use the indexes to lookup the records. You'll notice by doing it this way you're able to control the order and don't need alists to do so.

Trying to go down the road of deeply nested tables or alists will only lead you to pain and suffering (at least in arc).

Edit: wow, I think arc needs 'sets' too :)



1 point by kinnard 1913 days ago | link

The main issue with alists is that the special syntax doesn't work and the notation is so verbose . . . I don't know if the efficiency issues would even come to bear for me.

EDIT: nesting is not behaving as I expect but that may be a product of my own misunderstanding.

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2 points by i4cu 1913 days ago | link

I would be careful not to structure data/logic to accommodate a special syntax.

i.e while using:

  pipe!todo.1!id
is certainly fancy, writing a function is just as effective and most likely more performant since it doesn't require read de-structuring:

(fetch pipe todo first id)

So I'm suggesting you shape your syntax usage around your data, not your data around your syntax. You can always write a macro to obtain your desired level of brevity.

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2 points by kinnard 1913 days ago | link

Shaping syntax around data rather than data around syntax sounds like the move, I'm probably just not used to having that option.

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