Re: [squeak-smalltalk/squeak-object-memory] Avoid growth when filling large collections (Issue #160)

In Cuis Juan decided to remove #new: from collections that can grow (Set,
OrderedCollection, etc), and instead implement #newWithRoomForMoreThan: n.
I personally don’t like the selector (too verbose and hard to remember),
I’d use something like #allocate: perhaps, a single word.

But do we really need two different messages? What should “Set new: n”
mean? I think it should be a set that can hold up to n elements without
growing, not the size of the array used internally.

Cheers,
Luciano


On Wed, Jun 17, 2026 at 15:59 Marcel Taeumel via Squeak-dev <
[email protected]> wrote:

> *marceltaeumel* created an issue
> (squeak-smalltalk/squeak-object-memory#160)
> <https://github.com/squeak-smalltalk/squeak-object-memory/issues/160>
>
> When filling large collections, we have new: to set the expected capacity
> and new:withAll: to also define the objects to put in.
>
> However, as we do not expose a collection's growth strategy, the use of
> new: gets tricky if one wants to avoid extra growth at all cost, e.g.,
> when having millions of things.
>
> The growth strategy is hidden within a collection's implementation.
>
> A client would have to expose a best guess to avoid growth:
>
> bigDatabase := IdentityDictionary new: allObjects size * 4 // 3 + 16.
>
> Here numObjects * 4 // 3 + 16 is that guess. Maybe we want to offer a
> newForSizeNoGrow:.
>
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