Dancing Links is very marvelous form of optimization. Thanks to a intent to optimize this problem relating to combinatorial-exploration, Knuth's "Dancing Links

Dancing Links is very marvelous form of optimization. Thanks to a intent to optimize this problem relating to combinatorial-exploration, Knuth's "Dancing Links" operates upon a hyper-focused system where "malloc" and "free" of these linked lists are incredibly optimized. In fact, "malloc" is like 2 or 3 assembly instructions (akin to bump-allocation), while "free" is IIRC a no-op. This is because every linked-node can only point to the immediate cell to the right, or a cell later down the line. (So a malloc is basically &curNode+1). ------------- Its incredible that Knuth continues to work on this problem. I do think that these combinatorial problems he's gotten "stuck" on, here on Volume4, really constitute the most elegant of the entirety of the Comp. Sci field. I would like to see more chapters of Volume4 to come out though! ---------- I'll have to look at this "dancing cells" lecture of his, any improvements in this concept will definitely intrigue me.