Chainslongs

Chainslongs are a data structure concept used to store extremely long sequences of numeric values by dividing the sequence into linked segments, or chains. Each chain contains a contiguous block of values and a link to the next chain, allowing the entire sequence to grow without large contiguous allocations.

Typically implemented as a singly linked list of chunks. A chunk holds an array of 64-bit integers (longs) and a pointer to the next chunk. The logical length equals the sum of all chunk lengths, while each chunk maintains its own capacity.

Common operations include append, prepend, and iteration. Appending adds a value to the tail, creating a new chunk when the current one is full. Iteration traverses chunks in order, yielding values in sequence; slicing and transformations can be applied across chunk boundaries.

Chainslongs are suitable for applications that require streaming or incremental processing of very large numeric data without allocating a single, large contiguous buffer. Use cases include time-series or sensor data, genomic encodings, and log- or event-stream buffering in memory-constrained environments.

Design choices influence performance and memory usage. Typical decisions include fixed versus dynamic chunk sizes, single versus double linkage, and whether the structure is mutable, thread-safe, or persistent across sessions.

See also: linked list, chunked array, streaming buffer, time-series database, persistent data structures.