What's the least memory intensive data structure in i7?

[matt_weiner (matt w)]

@capmikee

@matt w

Hm, so are lists memory-hoggy? My IF-Demo busted right through the z-machine limits with eight objects, each associated with one table with between four and ten rows – but each row has a list with between two and five elements. [Besides this, there’s pretty much the bare minimum – a starting location and a yourself object, both completely nominal.]

Given that the lists are static but I need to access them randomly, is there a more efficient way to do it? It seems like the most ideal thing would be some kind of table within a table, but the only way I can think of to do that is to replace every list entry with a pointer to a new table, and the prospect of coding 62 more tables makes me want to curl up into a ball.

Table access is pretty fast. Can you make a big table that has a two-column key?

Hm, I guess I could hack it up by replacing something like this:

Tool Components Axe {handle, blade} Wheelbarrow {wheel, left handle, right handle, well}

with something like this:

Tool Component Axe handle Axe blade Wheelbarrow wheel Wheelbarrow left handle Wheelbarrow right handle Wheelbarrow well

And then instead of choosing a random member of the components entry of the row with tool wheelbarrow, I could choose a random row with tool wheelbarrow and choose the component entry. It wouldn’t be that much more typing. What I’m doing with the table is more complicated, so there’d be more workarounds to do, but that might be doable. – If I didn’t have to e-mail it to Emily approximately today, having already been granted an extension.

BTW, does anyone know the name for the part of the wheelbarrow that you put things in?