VOSS 3.1

When an object is added to a DictionarySet (or VirtualDictionarySet), it is added to each of the DictionarySet’s component AutoDictionaries, each of which sends its defined unary message selector to the object to obtain the key at which it is to be inserted.

If the object returns a VOKeySet or VOKeyCollection (which should also normally be a set of unique keys) then the object is added into that AutoDictionary at each of those keys; this may be useful, for example, if the DictionarySet elements are published books or papers, each of which may have been written by several contributing authors. The consequence of this, however, is that the DictionarySet would no longer be a set, as a book having three authors will be present three times, once at each author key, and this could cause unexpected behaviour in DictionarySet>>do: and other enumeration methods.

For this reason, when a DictionarySet is created it is automatically initialized with a baseDictionary on the key selector #yourself, which is thus a set, and DictionarySet>>do: etc. all operate on this baseDictionary.

This presents an opportunity for optimisation: since if it is known that none of the DictionarySet elements will ever return a VOKeySet or VOKeyCollection of keys, the baseDictionary is unnecessary and may be removed at any time, in an ordinary transaction, by the method DictionarySet>>removeBaseDictionary.

Subsequent transactions which add/remove objects to/from the DictionarySet will thus be faster. When there is no baseDictionary, DictionarySet>>do: etc. operate on one of the component AutoDictionaries chosen at random. jc
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