Explaining persistent data structures in simple terms

Posted by Jason Baker on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Jason Baker
Published on 2009-09-16T12:50:11Z Indexed on 2010/05/21 16:10 UTC
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Filed under:

python

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data-structures

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documentation

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functional-programming

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persistence

I'm working on a library for Python that implements some persistent data structures (mainly as a learning exercise). However, I'm beginning to learn that explaining persistent data structures to people unfamiliar with them can be difficult. Can someone help me think of an easy (or at least the least complicated) way to describe persistent data structures to them?

I've had a couple of people tell me that the documentation that I have is somewhat confusing.

(And before anyone asks, no I don't mean persistent data structures as in persisted to the file system. Google persistent data structures if you're unclear on this.)

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