On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 11:45:26AM -0800, bear wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 xxxxxx@freenetproject.org wrote:
>
> >On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 10:48:34AM -0800, bear wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 xxxxxx@freenetproject.org wrote:
> >>
> >> >I'd like to know what beyond lacking collection specific shortcut
> >> >functions is inefficient in the current SRFI.
> >>
> >> You're joking, right?  Without the "shortcut functions" as you call them
> >> being more efficient, there is no reason for most of these collections to
> >> exist at all.
> >
> >But they cannot be defined if they don't apply to the general class of
> >collections.  They need to be defined for those concrete classes or a
> >more specific general one (like ordered tree).
>
> Of course they can be defined for generic collections.  You can get
> the last element of a list; it's just the worst possible structure
> for that operation to be efficient.  Similarly, you can get a range
> of keys from an unordered alist, or any of the other "shortcut"
> operations.

But what about a dictionary with no ordering at all?