Horton

Re: POC: converting Lists into arrays

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

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From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: David Rowley <david.rowley@2ndquadrant.com>
Cc: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2019-03-05T00:32:32Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
David Rowley <david.rowley@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> ...  With list_concat() I find that pretty scary
> anyway. Using it means we can have a valid list that does not get it's
> length updated when someone appends a new item. Most users of that do
> list_copy() to sidestep that and other issues... which likely is
> something we'd want to rip out with Tom's patch.

Yeah, it's a bit OT for this patch, but I'd noticed the prevalence of
locutions like list_concat(list_copy(list1), list2), and been thinking
of proposing that we add some new primitives with, er, less ad-hoc
behavior.  The patch at hand already changes the semantics of list_concat
in a somewhat saner direction, but I think there is room for a version
of list_concat that treats both its inputs as const Lists.

			regards, tom lane

Commits

  1. Remove EState.es_range_table_array.

  2. Rationalize use of list_concat + list_copy combinations.

  3. Cosmetic improvements in setup of planner's per-RTE arrays.

  4. Make better use of the new List implementation in a couple of places

  5. Fix sepgsql test results for commit d97b714a2.

  6. Avoid using lcons and list_delete_first where it's easy to do so.

  7. Remove lappend_cell...() family of List functions.

  8. Clean up some ad-hoc code for sorting and de-duplicating Lists.

  9. Redesign the API for list sorting (list_qsort becomes list_sort).

  10. Remove dead code.

  11. Represent Lists as expansible arrays, not chains of cons-cells.

  12. Standardize some more loops that chase down parallel lists.

  13. Reimplement the linked list data structure used throughout the backend.