Re: list sort

[Steven Whitehouse <swhiteho@redhat.com>]

Hi,

On Wed, 2011-07-27 at 16:45 +0200, Clemens Ladisch wrote:
> Steven Whitehouse wrote:
> > There seems to be an issue with list_sort trying to compare an object to
> > itself. [...]
> > While it appears generally harmless, since the list does appear to be
> > correctly sorted, it is doing extra work needlessly.
> 
> There are sort algorithms where this happens naturally, and adding
> an additional check to avoid calling the comparison function when the
> pointers are equal would be more work overall than just calling cmp().
> 
> This does not happen with list_sort()'s merge sort, but I've noticed
> the following hack in merge_and_restore_back_links():
> 
> 	do {
> 		/*
> 		 * In worst cases this loop may run many iterations.
> 		 * Continue callbacks to the client even though no
> 		 * element comparison is needed, so the client's cmp()
> 		 * routine can invoke cond_resched() periodically.
> 		 */
> 		(*cmp)(priv, tail->next, tail->next);
> 
> 		tail->next->prev = tail;
> 		tail = tail->next;
> 	} while (tail->next);
> 
> When there is no cond_resched() call, this is indeed needless work.
> 
> However, if the list is so short that cond_resched() is not needed,
> the additional comparisons should not hurt anyway.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Clemens

Ah, I see now... that makes some kind of sense I think. I didn't expect
the cmp routine to be dual purpose in that way,

Steve.