From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:C70:editor-people Newsgroups: fa.editor-p Title: buffer structures Article-I.D.: ucb.1964 Posted: Fri Sep 17 08:31:19 1982 Received: Wed Sep 22 05:30:07 1982 >From EAK@MIT-MC Fri Sep 17 01:51:44 1982 No linked list of lines editor that I know of (including Multics EMACS, ZWEI, CCA EMACS, Gossling EMACS, TORES etc.) has ever implemented the EMACS buffer bounds concept. This probably has to do with a more basic limitation of the linked list of lines approach; namely, you can't easily tell which of two buffer positions is "first" efficiently. It seems to me that other ways of implementing buffer bounds should exist, but since no one has done so, and because I think bounds are a real feature, I dislike the linked list of lines approach. Also, relocating marks efficiently in a buffer gap scheme is easy. I have code that anyone can look at if they care. Marks a certainly NOT a reason for linked lists. Another interesting possibility is a binary-tree of "text" (which I prefer to lines for the reasons KLH gives). It is possible to compare buffer positions in log time using such structures.