Re: Computational complexity of accessing the Nth item

On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 21:06:40 -0000, Michael Kay <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > So, if I have understood correctly, having
> >
> >    $sequence[last()]
> >
> > (and somehow more than one reference to $sequence)
> > will guarantee that any further access to the items of $sequence will
> > be performed in constant time?
> 
> No guarantees: but yes, that's what I would expect to happen.
> >
> > Cant this be pre-computed automatically by the XSLT processor?
> > Something like computing a function with @memo-function="yes", but
> > done by the XSLT processor?
> 
> I'm not clear what you mean.


I want a "fast-sequence" that behaves like an array. In the
constructor implementation I'd put a reference to
          $sequence[last]

probably not a direct reference, but by calling a function myLast()
that returns
       $sequence[last]

I want this to be calculated only once. My question was will it be
successful to use the

saxon:memo-function="yes" attribute 

on the definition of myLast()


Cheers,
Dimitre.