Newbie question on arrays and indexing

Wiger Ulf ulf.wiger@REDACTED
Thu Mar 20 22:19:58 CET 2003


From: "Webb Sprague" <wwsprague@REDACTED>

> Shawn Pearce wrote:
>
> >Try element/2:
> >>T = {1, 2, 3, 4}.
> >{1, 2, 3, 4}
> >>element(1, T).
> >1
> >>element(3, T).
> >3

> I was just wondering if there were a more graceful way to do it.  I will
> look into more variations on element.

Tuples are pretty good for this. There is a function called
erlang:make_tuple(Size,DefaultValue) that allows you to cheaply create
even a rather large tuple.

For _very_large arrays, tuples are not so great, and neither are lists.
You can use ets, or perhaps a utility called dynarray, that you will find
under user contributions at erlang.org. Dynarray basically behaves as an
infinite array. It's implemented using a dynamically expanding tuple tree.
Its main drawback is in debugging, as the printouts can get unwieldy. In
this
respect, ets tables are very nice.

/Uffe




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