[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
Pete Cordell wrote:
> Someone mentioned the word 'combinatorial', but I couldn't find the
> e-mail it related to. In case it refers to a different combinatorial to
> the one I'm thinking of,...
That was me ...
> the problem I've encountered with fixing limits is when multiple nested
> structures have non-unity cardinality. For example, a book may have a
> number of volumes, which have a number of chapters, that have a number
> of sections, that have a number of sub-sections, that have a number of
> paragraphs, and which have a limit on the maximum number of characters
> in a paragraph (e.g. a string constraint).
>
> If you assign a reasonable number to each level, by the time you
> multiply it all out, you get a huge number that probably doesn't help
> you. If you try to limit the maximum size to something useful, your
> 'local' limits end up too small to be useful.
You've given a very nice example of the kind of thing I was thinking about.
Tom P
|
