[Freeciv-Dev] Re: freeciv2 kernel,modules and rulesets

[Andrew Sutton <ansutton@xxxxxxx>]

> On Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 08:34:24AM -0500, Andrew Sutton wrote:
> > closer... i was thinking of a map that stored some informatic structure
> > about the tile. it could be keyed on the x,y coordinate of the tile. if
> > nothing's on the tile, there's no associated key in the map. it's a
> > constant time lookup and hashtables _are_ built for sparsely populated
> > arrays :)
>
On Monday 03 December 2001 09:11 am, Raimar Falke wrote:
> And with 4 extra bytes we need only one (exactly one) memory access
> (which is quite constant to me).

both are equally good ideas. one is an optimization on size, the other time. 
actually, in the long run, it's probably going to be more effective to use 
the per-tile implementation because of the crappy insert time on hash tables 
(if i remember my CS right). and you're right, the extra bytes aren't overly 
significant unless you start talking about enormous maps (1024x1024?) god 
would that be fun.

maybe a good solution would be to implement both and heuristically choose the 
algorithm based on maps size...

andy