On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:44 AM, Andrew Gierth
<andrew@tao11.riddles.org.uk> wrote:
> Now, I follow this general principle that someone who is not doing the
> work should never say "X is easy" to someone who _is_ doing it, unless
> they're prepared to at least outline the solution on request or
> otherwise contribute. So see the attached patch (which I will concede
> could probably do with more comments, it's a quick hack intended for
> illustration) and tell me what you think is missing that would make it a
> complicated problem.
Okay, then. I concede the point: We should support the datum case as
you outline, since it is simpler than any alternative. It probably
won't even be necessary to formalize the idea that finished
abbreviated keys must be pass-by-value (at least not for the benefit
of this functionality); if someone writes an opclass that generates
pass-by-reference abbreviated keys (I think that might actually make
sense, although I'm being imaginative), it simply won't work for the
datum sort case, which is probably fine.
Are you going to submit this to the final commitfest? I'll review it if you do.
--
Peter Geoghegan