From eb9ee88f4cc640065f4902e270d834bfb596d5fc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: =?UTF-8?q?John=20H=C3=B6gberg?= <john@erlang.org>
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2018 18:17:12 +0200
Subject: Optimize operator '--' and yield on large inputs

The removal set now uses a red-black tree instead of an array on
large inputs, decreasing runtime complexity from `n*n` to
`n*log(n)`. It will also exit early when there are no more items
left in the removal set, drastically improving performance and
memory use when the items to be removed are present near the head
of the list.

This got a lot more complicated than before as the overhead of
always using a red-black tree was unacceptable when either of the
inputs were small, but this compromise has okay-to-decent
performance regardless of input size.

Co-authored-by: Dmytro Lytovchenko <dmytro.lytovchenko@erlang-solutions.com>
---
 lib/stdlib/doc/src/lists.xml | 8 --------
 1 file changed, 8 deletions(-)

(limited to 'lib/stdlib/doc/src')

diff --git a/lib/stdlib/doc/src/lists.xml b/lib/stdlib/doc/src/lists.xml
index c3d5d7e07a..e4215a5336 100644
--- a/lib/stdlib/doc/src/lists.xml
+++ b/lib/stdlib/doc/src/lists.xml
@@ -850,14 +850,6 @@ splitwith(Pred, List) ->
 > <input>lists:subtract("123212", "212").</input>
 "312".</pre>
         <p><c>lists:subtract(A, B)</c> is equivalent to <c>A -- B</c>.</p>
-        <warning>
-          <p>The complexity of <c>lists:subtract(A, B)</c> is proportional to
-            <c>length(A)*length(B)</c>, meaning that it is very slow if both
-            <c>A</c> and <c>B</c> are long lists. (If both lists are long, it
-            is a much better choice to use ordered lists and
-            <seealso marker="ordsets#subtract/2">
-            <c>ordsets:subtract/2</c></seealso>.</p>
-        </warning>
       </desc>
     </func>
 
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