René Scharfe <l.s.r@xxxxxx> writes: > We add and retrieve each commit in the (relevant part of) history. That > takes O(N) and O(1) for the sorted list, and O(log N) and O(log N) for > the prio_queue, where N is the length of the list. > > So the best-case history is a string of single-parent commits, keeping > only a single item on the list/queue throughout. That requires no > sorting or heaping, making the additions and retrievals O(1). The > overall complexity is then O(N) for both variants, N being the number > of commits in the history. > > Worst-case history might be a single merge of all commits -- a > centipede or myriapod? With all commits on the sorted list we get a > complexity of O(N²) for the traversal, and O(N log N) with a prio_queue. In other words, for a typical two-parent merge, we peek the current one, "replace" it with its first parent and then do the usual "put and sift it down into place" for the second one. I am wondering if there is a more optimization opportunity if we allowed "put more than one, and then sift all of them down into place". In other words, if I told the machinery: I am doing this put. I promise I won't do get until I say "now I'll start doing get's, so you are free to delay your internal state maintenance and do so immediately before my next 'get'". and did such put's a few times before I do a 'get', would there be a way to teach the machinery to take advantage of the promise? In any case, it is very much welcome to speed up "describe" with a better data structure and algorithm. Will queue. Thanks.