--- Eric Pouech eric.pouech@wanadoo.fr wrote:
I fail to see the benefits of the patch:
- key are sorted to allow O(log(n)) searching
(registry is loaded only once, and then searched lots of time) so using enhanced searching techniques (<< O(n)) is really needed
- saying that NT doesn't export the keys in an alphabetical order doesn't mean the keys are not sorted. So far, you can only tell that they are
not sorted, in the export mechanism, by an alphabetical order. They could be sorted, for example, by a hash code value (look at misc/registry.c for some more details on registry internals)
The tests show that values are exported in the same order in which they are created. This means the values are stored not in any particular order. Sure, Windows internallty can use map of keys for faster search but I doubt it.
A program can expect to retrieve values in the order they were created. In particular, the problem can be if the app creates names like Item1, ..., Item10. After sorting Item10 will be after Item1, not after Item9.
I don't have any doubts that existing code is faster. The point of the patch is compatibility with Windows behaviour.
Andriy Palamarchuk
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/