如果我有一些R列表mylist,你可以像这样添加一个obj项:

mylist[[length(mylist)+1]] <- obj

但肯定有一些更紧凑的方式。当我刚在R工作时,我试着像这样写lappend():

lappend <- function(lst, obj) {
    lst[[length(lst)+1]] <- obj
    return(lst)
}

但是,由于R的按名调用语义(lst在调用时被有效地复制,因此对lst的更改在lappend()的作用域之外是不可见的),这当然是行不通的。我知道您可以在R函数中进行环境入侵,从而超出函数的作用域并改变调用环境,但对于编写一个简单的附加函数来说,这似乎是一个巨大的打击。

有谁能提出一个更漂亮的方法吗?如果它对向量和列表都适用,那就更好了。


当前回答

我运行了以下基准测试:

bench=function(...,n=1,r=3){
  a=match.call(expand.dots=F)$...
  t=matrix(ncol=length(a),nrow=n)
  for(i in 1:length(a))for(j in 1:n){t1=Sys.time();eval(a[[i]],parent.frame());t[j,i]=Sys.time()-t1}
  o=t(apply(t,2,function(x)c(median(x),min(x),max(x),mean(x))))
  round(1e3*`dimnames<-`(o,list(names(a),c("median","min","max","mean"))),r)
}

ns=10^c(3:7)
m=sapply(ns,function(n)bench(n=5,
  `vector at length + 1`={l=c();for(i in 1:n)l[length(l)+1]=i},
  `vector at index`={l=c();for(i in 1:n)l[i]=i},
  `vector at index, initialize with type`={l=integer();for(i in 1:n)l[i]=i},
  `vector at index, initialize with length`={l=vector(length=n);for(i in 1:n)l[i]=i},
  `vector at index, initialize with type and length`={l=integer(n);for(i in 1:n)l[i]=i},
  `list at length + 1`={l=list();for(i in 1:n)l[[length(l)+1]]=i},
  `list at index`={l=list();for(i in 1:n)l[[i]]=i},
  `list at index, initialize with length`={l=vector('list',n);for(i in 1:n)l[[i]]=i},
  `list at index, initialize with double length, remove null`={l=vector("list",2*n);for(i in 1:n)l[[i]]=i;l=head(l,i)},
  `list at index, double when full, get length from variable`={len=1;l=list();for(i in 1:n){l[[i]]=i;if(i==len){len=len*2;length(l)=len}};l=head(l,i)},
  `list at index, double when full, check length inside loop`={len=1;l=list();for(i in 1:n){l[[i]]=i;if(i==length(l)){length(l)=i*2}};l=head(l,i)},
  `nested lists`={l=list();for(i in 1:n)l=list(l,i)},
  `nested lists with unlist`={if(n<=1e5){l=list();for(i in 1:n)l=list(l,i);o=unlist(l)}},
  `nested lists with manual unlist`={l=list();for(i in 1:n)l=list(l,i);o=integer(n);for(i in 1:n){o[n-i+1]=l[[2]];l=l[[1]]}},
  `JanKanis better_env_as_container`={env=new.env(hash=T,parent=globalenv());for(i in 1:n)env[[as.character(i)]]=i},
  `JanKanis inlineLinkedList`={a=list();for(i in 1:n)a=list(a,i);b=vector('list',n);head=a;for(i in n:1){b[[i]]=head[[2]];head=head[[1]]}},
  `JanKanis inlineExpandingList`={l=vector('list',10);cap=10;len=0;for(i in 1:n){if(len==cap){l=c(l,vector('list',cap));cap=cap*2};len=len+1;l[[len]]=i};l[1:len]},
  `c`={if(n<=1e5){l=c();for(i in 1:n)l=c(l,i)}},
  `append vector`={if(n<=1e5){l=integer(n);for(i in 1:n)l=append(l,i)}},
  `append list`={if(n<=1e9){l=list();for(i in 1:n)l=append(l,i)}}
)[,1])

m[rownames(m)%in%c("nested lists with unlist","c","append vector","append list"),4:5]=NA
m2=apply(m,2,function(x)formatC(x,max(0,2-ceiling(log10(min(x,na.rm=T)))),format="f"))
m3=apply(rbind(paste0("1e",log10(ns)),m2),2,function(x)formatC(x,max(nchar(x)),format="s"))
writeLines(apply(cbind(m3,c("",rownames(m))),1,paste,collapse=" "))

输出:

 1e3   1e4   1e5  1e6   1e7
2.35  24.5   245 2292 27146 vector at length + 1
0.61   5.9    60  590  7360 vector at index
0.61   5.9    64  587  7132 vector at index, initialize with type
0.56   5.6    54  523  6418 vector at index, initialize with length
0.54   5.5    55  522  6371 vector at index, initialize with type and length
2.65  28.8   299 3955 48204 list at length + 1
0.93   9.2    96 1605 13480 list at index
0.58   5.6    57  707  8461 list at index, initialize with length
0.62   5.8    59  739  9413 list at index, initialize with double length, remove null
0.88   8.4    81  962 11872 list at index, double when full, get length from variable
0.96   9.5    92 1264 15813 list at index, double when full, check length inside loop
0.21   1.9    22  426  3826 nested lists
0.25   2.4    29   NA    NA nested lists with unlist
2.85  27.5   295 3065 31427 nested lists with manual unlist
1.65  20.2   293 6505  8835 JanKanis better_env_as_container
1.11  10.1   110 1534 27119 JanKanis inlineLinkedList
2.66  26.3   266 3592 47120 JanKanis inlineExpandingList
1.22 118.6 15466   NA    NA c
3.64 512.0 45167   NA    NA append vector
6.35 664.8 71399   NA    NA append list

上表显示的是每种方法的中值时间,而不是平均时间,因为有时单个运行的时间比典型运行的时间长得多,这会扭曲平均运行时间。但是在第一次运行之后的后续运行中,没有一种方法变得更快,因此每种方法的最小时间和中值时间通常是相似的。

The method "vector at index" (l=c();for(i in 1:n)l[i]=i) was about 5 times faster than "vector at length + 1" (l=c();for(i in 1:n)l[length(l)]=i), because getting the length of the vector took longer than adding an element to the vector. When I initialized the vector with a predetermined length, it made the code about 20% faster, but initializing with a specific type didn't make a difference, because the type just needs to be changed once when the first item is added to the vector. And in the case of lists, when you compare the methods "list at index" and "list at index initialized with length", initializing the list with a predetermined length made a bigger difference as the length of the list increased, because it made the code about twice as fast at length 1e6 but about 3 times as fast at length 1e7.

方法“list at index”(l=list();for(i in 1:n)l[[i]]=i)比方法“list at length +1”(l=list();for(i in 1:n)l[[length(l)+1]]=i)快3-4倍。

JanKanis的链表和扩展列表方法比“索引列表”慢,但比“长度+ 1列表”快。链表比扩展表快。

有些人声称append函数比c函数快,但在我的基准测试中,append大约比c慢3-4倍。

在上表中,长度1e6和1e7和在三个方法中缺失:对于“c”,“append vector”和“append list”,因为它们具有二次时间复杂度,以及对于“带有unlist的嵌套列表”,因为它会导致堆栈溢出。

The "nested lists" option was the fastest, but it doesn't include the time that it takes to flatten the list. When I used the unlist function to flatten the nested list, I got a stack overflow when the length of the list was around 1.26e5 or higher, because the unlist function calls itself recursively by default: n=1.26e5;l=list();for(i in 1:n)l=list(l,list(i));u=unlist(l). And when I used repeated calls of unlist(recursive=F), it took about 4 seconds to run even for a list with only 10,000 items: for(i in 1:n)l=unlist(l,recursive=F). But when I did the unlisting manually, it only took about 0.3 seconds to run for a list with a million items: o=integer(n);for(i in 1:n){o[n-i+1]=l[[2]];l=l[[1]]}.

If you don't know how many items you are going to append to a list in advance but you know the maximum number of items, then you can try to initialize the list at the maximum length and then later remove NULL values. Or another approach is to double the size of the list every time the list becomes full (which you can do faster if you have one variable for the length of the list and another variable for the number of items you have added to the list, so then you don't have to check the length of the list object on each iteration of a loop):

ns=10^c(2:7)
m=sapply(ns,function(n)bench(n=5,
  `list at index`={l=list();for(i in 1:n)l[[i]]=i},
  `list at length + 1`={l=list();for(i in 1:n)l[[length(l)+1]]=i},
  `list at index, initialize with length`={l=vector("list",n);for(i in 1:n)l[[i]]=i},
  `list at index, initialize with double length, remove null`={l=vector("list",2*n);for(i in 1:n)l[[i]]=i;l=head(l,i)},
  `list at index, initialize with length 1e7, remove null`={l=vector("list",1e7);for(i in 1:n)l[[i]]=i;l=head(l,i)},
  `list at index, initialize with length 1e8, remove null`={l=vector("list",1e8);for(i in 1:n)l[[i]]=i;l=head(l,i)},
  `list at index, double when full, get length from variable`={len=1;l=list();for(i in 1:n){l[[i]]=i;if(i==len){len=len*2;length(l)=len}};l=head(l,i)},
  `list at index, double when full, check length inside loop`={len=1;l=list();for(i in 1:n){l[[i]]=i;if(i==length(l)){length(l)=i*2}};l=head(l,i)}
)[,1])

m2=apply(m,2,function(x)formatC(x,max(0,2-ceiling(log10(min(x)))),format="f"))
m3=apply(rbind(paste0("1e",log10(ns)),m2),2,function(x)formatC(x,max(nchar(x)),format="s"))
writeLines(apply(cbind(m3,c("",rownames(m))),1,paste,collapse=" "))

输出:

  1e4 1e5  1e6   1e7
  9.3 102 1225 13250 list at index
 27.4 315 3820 45920 list at length + 1
  5.7  58  726  7548 list at index, initialize with length
  5.8  60  748  8057 list at index, initialize with double length, remove null
 33.4  88  902  7684 list at index, initialize with length 1e7, remove null
333.2 393 2691 12245 list at index, initialize with length 1e8, remove null
  8.6  83 1032 10611 list at index, double when full, get length from variable
  9.3  96 1280 14319 list at index, double when full, check length inside loop

其他回答

The OP (in the April 2012 updated revision of the question) is interested in knowing if there's a way to add to a list in amortized constant time, such as can be done, for example, with a C++ vector<> container. The best answer(s?) here so far only show the relative execution times for various solutions given a fixed-size problem, but do not address any of the various solutions' algorithmic efficiency directly. Comments below many of the answers discuss the algorithmic efficiency of some of the solutions, but in every case to date (as of April 2015) they come to the wrong conclusion.

算法效率捕获随着问题规模增长的时间(执行时间)或空间(内存消耗量)的增长特征。给定一个固定大小的问题,为各种解决方案运行性能测试并不能解决各种解决方案的增长速度。OP感兴趣的是知道是否有一种方法可以在“平摊常数时间”中将对象追加到R列表中。这是什么意思?为了解释,首先让我描述一下“常数时间”:

Constant or O(1) growth: If the time required to perform a given task remains the same as the size of the problem doubles, then we say the algorithm exhibits constant time growth, or stated in "Big O" notation, exhibits O(1) time growth. When the OP says "amortized" constant time, he simply means "in the long run"... i.e., if performing a single operation occasionally takes much longer than normal (e.g. if a preallocated buffer is exhausted and occasionally requires resizing to a larger buffer size), as long as the long-term average performance is constant time, we'll still call it O(1). For comparison, I will also describe "linear time" and "quadratic time": Linear or O(n) growth: If the time required to perform a given task doubles as the size of the problem doubles, then we say the algorithm exhibits linear time, or O(n) growth. Quadratic or O(n2) growth: If the time required to perform a given task increases by the square of the problem size, them we say the algorithm exhibits quadratic time, or O(n2) growth.

还有很多其他效率算法;我参考维基百科的文章进行进一步讨论。

我感谢@CronAcronis的回答,因为我是R的新手,很高兴有一个完整的代码块来对本页上提供的各种解决方案进行性能分析。我借用了他的代码用于我的分析,我复制了下面(包装在一个函数中):

library(microbenchmark)
### Using environment as a container
lPtrAppend <- function(lstptr, lab, obj) {lstptr[[deparse(substitute(lab))]] <- obj}
### Store list inside new environment
envAppendList <- function(lstptr, obj) {lstptr$list[[length(lstptr$list)+1]] <- obj} 
runBenchmark <- function(n) {
    microbenchmark(times = 5,  
        env_with_list_ = {
            listptr <- new.env(parent=globalenv())
            listptr$list <- NULL
            for(i in 1:n) {envAppendList(listptr, i)}
            listptr$list
        },
        c_ = {
            a <- list(0)
            for(i in 1:n) {a = c(a, list(i))}
        },
        list_ = {
            a <- list(0)
            for(i in 1:n) {a <- list(a, list(i))}
        },
        by_index = {
            a <- list(0)
            for(i in 1:n) {a[length(a) + 1] <- i}
            a
        },
        append_ = { 
            a <- list(0)    
            for(i in 1:n) {a <- append(a, i)} 
            a
        },
        env_as_container_ = {
            listptr <- new.env(parent=globalenv())
            for(i in 1:n) {lPtrAppend(listptr, i, i)} 
            listptr
        }   
    )
}

@CronAcronis发布的结果显然表明,a <- list(a, list(i))方法是最快的,至少对于10000大小的问题是这样,但是对于单个问题大小的结果并没有解决解决方案的增长问题。为此,我们需要针对不同的问题大小运行至少两个概要测试:

> runBenchmark(2e+3)
Unit: microseconds
              expr       min        lq      mean    median       uq       max neval
    env_with_list_  8712.146  9138.250 10185.533 10257.678 10761.33 12058.264     5
                c_ 13407.657 13413.739 13620.976 13605.696 13790.05 13887.738     5
             list_   854.110   913.407  1064.463   914.167  1301.50  1339.132     5
          by_index 11656.866 11705.140 12182.104 11997.446 12741.70 12809.363     5
           append_ 15986.712 16817.635 17409.391 17458.502 17480.55 19303.560     5
 env_as_container_ 19777.559 20401.702 20589.856 20606.961 20939.56 21223.502     5
> runBenchmark(2e+4)
Unit: milliseconds
              expr         min         lq        mean    median          uq         max neval
    env_with_list_  534.955014  550.57150  550.329366  553.5288  553.955246  558.636313     5
                c_ 1448.014870 1536.78905 1527.104276 1545.6449 1546.462877 1558.609706     5
             list_    8.746356    8.79615    9.162577    8.8315    9.601226    9.837655     5
          by_index  953.989076 1038.47864 1037.859367 1064.3942 1065.291678 1067.143200     5
           append_ 1634.151839 1682.94746 1681.948374 1689.7598 1696.198890 1706.683874     5
 env_as_container_  204.134468  205.35348  208.011525  206.4490  208.279580  215.841129     5
> 

First of all, a word about the min/lq/mean/median/uq/max values: Since we are performing the exact same task for each of 5 runs, in an ideal world, we could expect that it would take exactly the same amount of time for each run. But the first run is normally biased toward longer times due to the fact that the code we are testing is not yet loaded into the CPU's cache. Following the first run, we would expect the times to be fairly consistent, but occasionally our code may be evicted from the cache due to timer tick interrupts or other hardware interrupts that are unrelated to the code we are testing. By testing the code snippets 5 times, we are allowing the code to be loaded into the cache during the first run and then giving each snippet 4 chances to run to completion without interference from outside events. For this reason, and because we are really running the exact same code under the exact same input conditions each time, we will consider only the 'min' times to be sufficient for the best comparison between the various code options.

请注意,我选择首先运行问题大小为2000,然后运行问题大小为20000,因此我的问题大小从第一次运行到第二次运行增加了10倍。

表解性能:O(1)(常数时间)

Let's first look at the growth of the list solution, since we can tell right away that it's the fastest solution in both profiling runs: In the first run, it took 854 microseconds (0.854 milliseconds) to perform 2000 "append" tasks. In the second run, it took 8.746 milliseconds to perform 20000 "append" tasks. A naïve observer would say, "Ah, the list solution exhibits O(n) growth, since as the problem size grew by a factor of ten, so did the time required to execute the test." The problem with that analysis is that what the OP wants is the growth rate of a single object insertion, not the growth rate of the overall problem. Knowing that, it's clear then that the list solution provides exactly what the OP wants: a method of appending objects to a list in O(1) time.

其他解决方案的性能

其他的解决方案都没有接近列表解决方案的速度,但无论如何,检查它们都是有信息的:

Most of the other solutions appear to be O(n) in performance. For example, the by_index solution, a very popular solution based on the frequency with which I find it in other SO posts, took 11.6 milliseconds to append 2000 objects, and 953 milliseconds to append ten times that many objects. The overall problem's time grew by a factor of 100, so a naïve observer might say "Ah, the by_index solution exhibits O(n2) growth, since as the problem size grew by a factor of ten, the time required to execute the test grew by a factor of 100." As before, this analysis is flawed, since the OP is interested in the growth of a single object insertion. If we divide the overall time growth by the problem's size growth, we find that the time growth of appending objects increased by a factor of only 10, not a factor of 100, which matches the growth of the problem size, so the by_index solution is O(n). There are no solutions listed which exhibit O(n2) growth for appending a single object.

还有一个列表。从rlist中追加(链接到文档)

require(rlist)
LL <- list(a="Tom", b="Dick")
list.append(LL,d="Pam",f=c("Joe","Ann"))

这非常简单和有效。

我认为你要做的实际上是通过引用(指针)传递给函数——创建一个新的环境(通过引用传递给函数),并添加列表:

listptr=new.env(parent=globalenv())
listptr$list=mylist

#Then the function is modified as:
lPtrAppend <- function(lstptr, obj) {
    lstptr$list[[length(lstptr$list)+1]] <- obj
}

现在您只是在修改现有的列表(而不是创建一个新的列表)

我对这里提到的方法做了一个小的比较。

n = 1e+4
library(microbenchmark)
### Using environment as a container
lPtrAppend <- function(lstptr, lab, obj) {lstptr[[deparse(substitute(lab))]] <- obj}
### Store list inside new environment
envAppendList <- function(lstptr, obj) {lstptr$list[[length(lstptr$list)+1]] <- obj} 

microbenchmark(times = 5,  
        env_with_list_ = {
            listptr <- new.env(parent=globalenv())
            listptr$list <- NULL
            for(i in 1:n) {envAppendList(listptr, i)}
            listptr$list
        },
        c_ = {
            a <- list(0)
            for(i in 1:n) {a = c(a, list(i))}
        },
        list_ = {
            a <- list(0)
            for(i in 1:n) {a <- list(a, list(i))}
        },
        by_index = {
            a <- list(0)
            for(i in 1:n) {a[length(a) + 1] <- i}
            a
        },
        append_ = { 
            a <- list(0)    
            for(i in 1:n) {a <- append(a, i)} 
            a
        },
        env_as_container_ = {
            listptr <- new.env(parent=globalenv())
            for(i in 1:n) {lPtrAppend(listptr, i, i)} 
            listptr
        }   
)

结果:

Unit: milliseconds
              expr       min        lq       mean    median        uq       max neval cld
    env_with_list_  188.9023  198.7560  224.57632  223.2520  229.3854  282.5859     5  a 
                c_ 1275.3424 1869.1064 2022.20984 2191.7745 2283.1199 2491.7060     5   b
             list_   17.4916   18.1142   22.56752   19.8546   20.8191   36.5581     5  a 
          by_index  445.2970  479.9670  540.20398  576.9037  591.2366  607.6156     5  a 
           append_ 1140.8975 1316.3031 1794.10472 1620.1212 1855.3602 3037.8416     5   b
 env_as_container_  355.9655  360.1738  399.69186  376.8588  391.7945  513.6667     5  a 

在其他答案中,只有列表方法会导致O(1)个追加,但它会导致深度嵌套的列表结构,而不是简单的单个列表。我使用了下面的数据结构,它们支持O(1)(平摊)追加,并允许结果转换回一个普通列表。

expandingList <- function(capacity = 10) {
    buffer <- vector('list', capacity)
    length <- 0

    methods <- list()

    methods$double.size <- function() {
        buffer <<- c(buffer, vector('list', capacity))
        capacity <<- capacity * 2
    }

    methods$add <- function(val) {
        if(length == capacity) {
            methods$double.size()
        }

        length <<- length + 1
        buffer[[length]] <<- val
    }

    methods$as.list <- function() {
        b <- buffer[0:length]
        return(b)
    }

    methods
}

and

linkedList <- function() {
    head <- list(0)
    length <- 0

    methods <- list()

    methods$add <- function(val) {
        length <<- length + 1
        head <<- list(head, val)
    }

    methods$as.list <- function() {
        b <- vector('list', length)
        h <- head
        for(i in length:1) {
            b[[i]] <- head[[2]]
            head <- head[[1]]
        }
        return(b)
    }
    methods
}

使用方法如下:

> l <- expandingList()
> l$add("hello")
> l$add("world")
> l$add(101)
> l$as.list()
[[1]]
[1] "hello"

[[2]]
[1] "world"

[[3]]
[1] 101

这些解决方案可以扩展为支持所有列表相关操作的完整对象,但这仍将作为读者的练习。

命名列表的另一种变体:

namedExpandingList <- function(capacity = 10) {
    buffer <- vector('list', capacity)
    names <- character(capacity)
    length <- 0

    methods <- list()

    methods$double.size <- function() {
        buffer <<- c(buffer, vector('list', capacity))
        names <<- c(names, character(capacity))
        capacity <<- capacity * 2
    }

    methods$add <- function(name, val) {
        if(length == capacity) {
            methods$double.size()
        }

        length <<- length + 1
        buffer[[length]] <<- val
        names[length] <<- name
    }

    methods$as.list <- function() {
        b <- buffer[0:length]
        names(b) <- names[0:length]
        return(b)
    }

    methods
}

基准

使用@phonetagger的代码(基于@Cron Arconis的代码)进行性能比较。我还添加了一个better_env_as_container,并对env_as_container_进行了一些更改。原来的env_as_container_被破坏了,实际上并没有存储所有的数字。

library(microbenchmark)
lPtrAppend <- function(lstptr, lab, obj) {lstptr[[deparse(lab)]] <- obj}
### Store list inside new environment
envAppendList <- function(lstptr, obj) {lstptr$list[[length(lstptr$list)+1]] <- obj} 
env2list <- function(env, len) {
    l <- vector('list', len)
    for (i in 1:len) {
        l[[i]] <- env[[as.character(i)]]
    }
    l
}
envl2list <- function(env, len) {
    l <- vector('list', len)
    for (i in 1:len) {
        l[[i]] <- env[[paste(as.character(i), 'L', sep='')]]
    }
    l
}
runBenchmark <- function(n) {
    microbenchmark(times = 5,  
        env_with_list_ = {
            listptr <- new.env(parent=globalenv())
            listptr$list <- NULL
            for(i in 1:n) {envAppendList(listptr, i)}
            listptr$list
        },
        c_ = {
            a <- list(0)
            for(i in 1:n) {a = c(a, list(i))}
        },
        list_ = {
            a <- list(0)
            for(i in 1:n) {a <- list(a, list(i))}
        },
        by_index = {
            a <- list(0)
            for(i in 1:n) {a[length(a) + 1] <- i}
            a
        },
        append_ = { 
            a <- list(0)    
            for(i in 1:n) {a <- append(a, i)} 
            a
        },
        env_as_container_ = {
            listptr <- new.env(hash=TRUE, parent=globalenv())
            for(i in 1:n) {lPtrAppend(listptr, i, i)} 
            envl2list(listptr, n)
        },
        better_env_as_container = {
            env <- new.env(hash=TRUE, parent=globalenv())
            for(i in 1:n) env[[as.character(i)]] <- i
            env2list(env, n)
        },
        linkedList = {
            a <- linkedList()
            for(i in 1:n) { a$add(i) }
            a$as.list()
        },
        inlineLinkedList = {
            a <- list()
            for(i in 1:n) { a <- list(a, i) }
            b <- vector('list', n)
            head <- a
            for(i in n:1) {
                b[[i]] <- head[[2]]
                head <- head[[1]]
            }                
        },
        expandingList = {
            a <- expandingList()
            for(i in 1:n) { a$add(i) }
            a$as.list()
        },
        inlineExpandingList = {
            l <- vector('list', 10)
            cap <- 10
            len <- 0
            for(i in 1:n) {
                if(len == cap) {
                    l <- c(l, vector('list', cap))
                    cap <- cap*2
                }
                len <- len + 1
                l[[len]] <- i
            }
            l[1:len]
        }
    )
}

# We need to repeatedly add an element to a list. With normal list concatenation
# or element setting this would lead to a large number of memory copies and a
# quadratic runtime. To prevent that, this function implements a bare bones
# expanding array, in which list appends are (amortized) constant time.
    expandingList <- function(capacity = 10) {
        buffer <- vector('list', capacity)
        length <- 0

        methods <- list()

        methods$double.size <- function() {
            buffer <<- c(buffer, vector('list', capacity))
            capacity <<- capacity * 2
        }

        methods$add <- function(val) {
            if(length == capacity) {
                methods$double.size()
            }

            length <<- length + 1
            buffer[[length]] <<- val
        }

        methods$as.list <- function() {
            b <- buffer[0:length]
            return(b)
        }

        methods
    }

    linkedList <- function() {
        head <- list(0)
        length <- 0

        methods <- list()

        methods$add <- function(val) {
            length <<- length + 1
            head <<- list(head, val)
        }

        methods$as.list <- function() {
            b <- vector('list', length)
            h <- head
            for(i in length:1) {
                b[[i]] <- head[[2]]
                head <- head[[1]]
            }
            return(b)
        }

        methods
    }

# We need to repeatedly add an element to a list. With normal list concatenation
# or element setting this would lead to a large number of memory copies and a
# quadratic runtime. To prevent that, this function implements a bare bones
# expanding array, in which list appends are (amortized) constant time.
    namedExpandingList <- function(capacity = 10) {
        buffer <- vector('list', capacity)
        names <- character(capacity)
        length <- 0

        methods <- list()

        methods$double.size <- function() {
            buffer <<- c(buffer, vector('list', capacity))
            names <<- c(names, character(capacity))
            capacity <<- capacity * 2
        }

        methods$add <- function(name, val) {
            if(length == capacity) {
                methods$double.size()
            }

            length <<- length + 1
            buffer[[length]] <<- val
            names[length] <<- name
        }

        methods$as.list <- function() {
            b <- buffer[0:length]
            names(b) <- names[0:length]
            return(b)
        }

        methods
    }

结果:

> runBenchmark(1000)
Unit: microseconds
                    expr       min        lq      mean    median        uq       max neval
          env_with_list_  3128.291  3161.675  4466.726  3361.837  3362.885  9318.943     5
                      c_  3308.130  3465.830  6687.985  8578.913  8627.802  9459.252     5
                   list_   329.508   343.615   389.724   370.504   449.494   455.499     5
                by_index  3076.679  3256.588  5480.571  3395.919  8209.738  9463.931     5
                 append_  4292.321  4562.184  7911.882 10156.957 10202.773 10345.177     5
       env_as_container_ 24471.511 24795.849 25541.103 25486.362 26440.591 26511.200     5
 better_env_as_container  7671.338  7986.597  8118.163  8153.726  8335.659  8443.493     5
              linkedList  1700.754  1755.439  1829.442  1804.746  1898.752  1987.518     5
        inlineLinkedList  1109.764  1115.352  1163.751  1115.631  1206.843  1271.166     5
           expandingList  1422.440  1439.970  1486.288  1519.728  1524.268  1525.036     5
     inlineExpandingList   942.916   973.366  1002.461  1012.197  1017.784  1066.044     5
> runBenchmark(10000)
Unit: milliseconds
                    expr        min         lq       mean     median         uq        max neval
          env_with_list_ 357.760419 360.277117 433.810432 411.144799 479.090688 560.779139     5
                      c_ 685.477809 734.055635 761.689936 745.957553 778.330873 864.627811     5
                   list_   3.257356   3.454166   3.505653   3.524216   3.551454   3.741071     5
                by_index 445.977967 454.321797 515.453906 483.313516 560.374763 633.281485     5
                 append_ 610.777866 629.547539 681.145751 640.936898 760.570326 763.896124     5
       env_as_container_ 281.025606 290.028380 303.885130 308.594676 314.972570 324.804419     5
 better_env_as_container  83.944855  86.927458  90.098644  91.335853  92.459026  95.826030     5
              linkedList  19.612576  24.032285  24.229808  25.461429  25.819151  26.223597     5
        inlineLinkedList  11.126970  11.768524  12.216284  12.063529  12.392199  13.730200     5
           expandingList  14.735483  15.854536  15.764204  16.073485  16.075789  16.081726     5
     inlineExpandingList  10.618393  11.179351  13.275107  12.391780  14.747914  17.438096     5
> runBenchmark(20000)
Unit: milliseconds
                    expr         min          lq       mean      median          uq         max neval
          env_with_list_ 1723.899913 1915.003237 1921.23955 1938.734718 1951.649113 2076.910767     5
                      c_ 2759.769353 2768.992334 2810.40023 2820.129738 2832.350269 2870.759474     5
                   list_    6.112919    6.399964    6.63974    6.453252    6.910916    7.321647     5
                by_index 2163.585192 2194.892470 2292.61011 2209.889015 2436.620081 2458.063801     5
                 append_ 2832.504964 2872.559609 2983.17666 2992.634568 3004.625953 3213.558197     5
       env_as_container_  573.386166  588.448990  602.48829  597.645221  610.048314  642.912752     5
 better_env_as_container  154.180531  175.254307  180.26689  177.027204  188.642219  206.230191     5
              linkedList   38.401105   47.514506   46.61419   47.525192   48.677209   50.952958     5
        inlineLinkedList   25.172429   26.326681   32.33312   34.403442   34.469930   41.293126     5
           expandingList   30.776072   30.970438   34.45491   31.752790   38.062728   40.712542     5
     inlineExpandingList   21.309278   22.709159   24.64656   24.290694   25.764816   29.158849     5

我已经添加了linkedList和expandingList和两者的内联版本。inlinedLinkedList基本上是list_的副本,但它也将嵌套结构转换回普通列表。除此之外,内联版本和非内联版本之间的差异是由于函数调用的开销。

expandingList和linkedList的所有变体都显示O(1)附加性能,基准时间随附加项的数量线性扩展。linkedList比expandingList慢,而且函数调用开销也是可见的。所以如果你真的需要所有你能得到的速度(并且想坚持R代码),使用一个内联版本的expandingList。

我还研究了R的C实现,这两种方法都应该是O(1)追加任何大小,直到耗尽内存。

我也改变了env_as_container_,原始版本将存储索引“I”下的每一项,覆盖先前追加的项。我添加的better_env_as_container非常类似于env_as_container_,但没有离开的东西。两者都表现出O(1)性能,但它们的开销比链接/展开列表要大得多。

内存开销

In the C R implementation there is an overhead of 4 words and 2 ints per allocated object. The linkedList approach allocates one list of length two per append, for a total of (4*8+4+4+2*8=) 56 bytes per appended item on 64-bit computers (excluding memory allocation overhead, so probably closer to 64 bytes). The expandingList approach uses one word per appended item, plus a copy when doubling the vector length, so a total memory usage of up to 16 bytes per item. Since the memory is all in one or two objects the per-object overhead is insignificant. I haven't looked deeply into the env memory usage, but I think it will be closer to linkedList.