Re: [Bloom] review starts on 13th of May

From: Дмитрий Архипов (grisumbras_at_[hidden])
Date: 2025-05-21 07:39:23

вт, 13 мая 2025 г. в 12:48, Arnaud Becheler via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]>:
>
> Dear Boost community,
>
> The review of the Boost.Bloom library begins today May 13th, 2025, and will
> run through May 22nd, 2025.

This is my review of the proposed Boost.Bloom library.
First of all, I want to disclose that I work for the C++ Alliance.
Also, I don't have any particular knowledge of probabilistic theory or
container implementations. Between reading documentation and tinkering
with the tests, examples, and benchmarks, I'd say I've spent around 6
hours.

The library is very to the point: it implements a particular data
structure and provides ways to customise it for your needs. The
documentation also explains why one would need to customise it.
Customisation is very easily done, which is good. The API is small,
but I looked at other libraries that implement Bloom filters and
couldn't find anything that's missing. After thinking about it for
several days I could only conceive of one possible extra operation:
looking for several items at once may potentially be faster than doing
it in sequence.

The container provided by this library can be used to optimise search.
This has a broad range of applications (the docs have a link to a
paper that lists several), but on the other hand is limited by the
speed of the search that is being optimised compared to the speed of
Bloom filter. Which is why it is crucial for Bloom filters to be as
fast as possible. The provided benchmarks compare bloom filters with
boost::unordered_flat_set (AFAIK the fastest dictionary container in
the world) and there are indeed configurations when bloom::filter wins
even in that competition. Joaquin also assures that competitor
libraries are at least not faster than his. So, I think that the
library has utility.

My only criticism of the documentation is that I don't believe it
mentions why Bloom filters are called that. When I started doing my
review I thought that there is some metaphorical connection between
the container and flowers blooming. I am in general not a fan of one
page documentation, but this one is short enough to work well in this
format.

I recommend we ACCEPT the library into Boost. I want to thank Joaquin
for submitting the library and Arnaud for managing the review process.