On Jan 22, 2008, at 6:37 PM, Linus Torvalds wrote:

quoted text
> Ok, here's an interesting patch based on the current 'next' (since  
> it very
> intimately requires the new in-memory index format).
>
> What it does is to create a hash index of every single file added to  
> the
> index. Right now that hash index isn't actually used for much: I
> implemented a "cache_name_exists()" function that uses it to  
> efficiently
> look up a filename in the index without having to do the O(logn)  
> binary
> search, but quite frankly, that's not why this patch is interesting.
>
> No, the whole and only reason to create the hash of the filenames in  
> the
> index is that by modifying the hash function, you can fairly easily do
> things like making it always hash equivalent names into the same  
> bucket.

This is fantastic. Thank you very much for actually taking this issue  
seriously despite the mess I made on the list. This is exactly why I  
wanted to discuss on the lists instead of hacking away myself - there  
are very smart people on the list (like you) that already know how git  
works that can come up with ideas like this while I would still be  
trying to figure out where the index code is even stored.

-Kevin Ballard

-- 
Kevin Ballard
http://kevin.sb.org
kevin@sb.org
http://www.tildesoft.com