Re: [xsl] Tree Comparing Algorithm

["Michael Kay mike@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <xsl-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Even if the probability of two objects to have the same hash code is low, we
should take this into account -- for example, we may choose to calculate a
pair of hash codes for each object, using two independent hashing algorithms.
>

This reminds me of an incident during my time with ICL when we were designing
a hardware accelerator containing search logic, and it did precisely this. The
software people (like me) were horrified, but the hardware designers were
entirely comfortable with doing statistical calculations on the probability of
failures, and so long as the expected number of failures was significantly
less than one in the design lifetime of the device, they were happy to go with
it.

Michael Kay
Saxonica