[Toybox] [PATCH] vi: Replace linelist with mem_block based design

enh enh at google.com
Thu Jan 16 08:27:57 PST 2020


my 2c: i wouldn't do anything this complicated. every editor i've
written or worked on in the past used the much simpler scheme of one
buffer with a gap at the most recent insertion point
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gap_buffer]. the most extra complexity
i've seen this cause is a separate array of line breaks, but since we
have the busybox vi style of not doing line wrapping, that seems
unnecessary?

i do know that Visual Studio Code started with an array of lines and
switched to a piece table (common in word processors)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_table], but then you end up
needing a cache to make that fast, and...
https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-reimplementation

On Thu, Jan 16, 2020 at 8:17 AM Rob Landley <rob at landley.net> wrote:
>
> On 1/16/20 7:58 AM, Jarno Mäkipää wrote:
> > Replaced dlist linelist with continuous memory blocks. This will allow
> > editing huge files without billion mallocs.
>
> More or less what I was trying to implement back when vi was a thing I was going
> to work on.
>
> > File is first opened with
> > mmap() and mapped region is fully described in block_list as one block.
>
> When I tried this it turned into a complex mess of different objects with
> different allocation/lifetime rules that had to interact. I intended to cap the
> block size because splitting becomes painful otherwise (and then wound up having
> strings individually allocated with the array of pointers to the start of
> strings being a seperate allocation), and of course mmap() requiring the offset
> to be a multiple of page size combined badly with line starts being all over the
> place...
>
> (I never did figure out what to do about a file that changed out from under you
> while you were editing it. The MAP_SHARED version has the changes invalidate
> your indexes and segfault, especially if it's truncated out from under you. The
> MAP_PRIVATE version doesn't work on nommu, I believe still has the truncate
> problem, and doesn't help you with parts it hasn't faulted in until after the
> file changed.)
>
> > Currently "valid" data is described as slices, when first loading file
> > there is only one slice that points to memory existing in block_list.
> > When cutting text, block_list is not freed or modified, but instead
> > slice_list is modified to have "hole" between 2 slices. when inserting
> > new mem_block is added, previos slices are cut in cursor position and
> > new slice is added...
>
> *shrug* I leave this to you.
>
> > Implementation is not as finished as old linelist, but most of the heavy
> > lifting is done so wanted to share this at this state.
> >
> > Added functions to handling data inside block_list+slice_list
> >
> > insert_str(), cut_str() are used for all delete and add operations
> > text_strrchr(), text_strchr() are used for searching lineendings
> > text_byte(), text_codepoint(), text_getline() are for simple data access
> >
> > Implemented: yank,delete,insert,push and most of the previos moves
> >
> > Implemented partly: saving of file, since current file is still mmaped
> > cant save on top of it,
>
> You never want to do that anyway because a crash halfway through (battery dies,
> etc) leaves you a corrupted file.
>
> > so now saves into "filename".swp, later need
> > to move .swp into original file after munmap
>
> rename() is atomic.
>
> > Not Implemented: search, linenumber counting, etc..
> >
> > Removed: Some unused functions
> >
> > br
> >
> > -Jarno
>
> Do I apply this or not?
>
> Rob
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