At 5:15 PM -0500 11/7/06,
There's a theorem in hash theory (proved by Komlos, one of my old profs) that says that you can always generate a perfect hash function if you know the values you need to hash. That is, you can generate a hash function that requires exactly one lookup in every case. But I don't know any compiler that actually does this. Since all cases are known at compile time, doing this should be a beneficial runtime optimization for large switches (if the generated hash function is sufficiently cheap). Maybe this could be done using the MPL? I don't know TMP well enough to know where to begin on something like this.
I remember doing this in college, in the "compiler construction" class - we had a perfect hash table for the keywords in the language that we were compiling. -- -- Marshall Marshall Clow Idio Software mailto:marshall@idio.com It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.