Talk:Association list

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refocus of article on association list /associative list to what it is rather than its implementation[edit]

The artical begins almost immediately with a particular implementation of an associative list / association list. This should be **part** of a later section of the article.

The first section should identify WHAT such a list is. Next further clarify it by comparing and contrasting its features/properties with other list structures and data structures/fundamental types. Then identify the uses of such a list.

Finally, identify software systems for which associative lists are a foundation data type. and then elaborate on how they may be implemented.

The article says that associative lists are unusable/un-scalable. The fact is, this usability or lack thereof is solely a consequence of how they were implemented - not the features of the list itself. Cgarnant (talk) 20:34, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like you are looking for associative array, which describes a broad class of data structures with similar operations. This article is instead on a specific implementation of associative arrays. So it is entirely appropriate that it is focused on those implementation details and their implications for usage of this implementation method. It is also entirely appropriate that we have separate Wikipedia articles on the class of data structures and on this specific implementation within this class. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:42, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

actually not quite, since an array is a specific type of list, not the other way around.

Perhaps it would help if the context - i.e., 'what' (and in which 'universe', for example is this LISP, APL, Haskell-specific or ...) - were still first covered before the implementation.

It still seems weird to find 'associative list' directed to this article. Cgarnant (talk) 18:57, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Re "an array is a specific type of list": Array (data structure) is a specific implementation of an ordered collection. But associative array is not about that. It is about dictionaries, key-value maps, whatever you want to call them, the abstraction for which this article here describes an implementation. The fact that it has "array" in the name should not confuse you into thinking that it must be implemented using arrays. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:11, 13 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]