Jeff King wrote: > I don't see any point in generating a sorted list and _then_ making an > auxiliary hashmap. My idea was that if you're using a sorted string-list > for lookup, then you can replace the whole thing with a hash (inserting > as you go, rather than sorting at the end). What if I'm sorting a string list in preparation for emitting a sorted list, and I *also* want to perform lookups in that same list? In other words: [...] > I think Stefan pointed out a "case 4" in the other part of the thread: > ones where we really care not just about fast lookup, but actual > iteration order. I had assumed that that was the whole point of this data structure. Anything else that is using it for lookups should indeed use a hash map instead, and I can take my share of blame for missing this kind of thing in review. [...] > I think I like the hashmap way, if the conversion isn't too painful. If we don't have any callers that actually need the sort-and-lookup thing, then yay, let's get rid of it. But I don't actually think of this as the hashmap way. It's the get-rid-of-the-unneeded-feature way. In other words, *regardless* of what else we should do, we should update any callers that want a hashmap to use a hashmap. Please go ahead, even if it doesn't let us simplify the string list API at all. Thanks, Jonathan