When ReferenceItem::appendValue was originally implemented, it would do an append unique which resulted in N-squared behavior. Later we added an optional parameter to allow duplicates which would do a normal append. This was needed to deal with large number of values. However, the default for that parameter was set to “false” meaning that the default behavior was to do a unique append.
I would like to change the default to be “true” instead for the following reasons:
- Almost all of the operators are not specifying the optional parameter and therefore are doing an append unique instead of a regular append for their results, even though their algorithm already guarantees the values will be unique.
- The UI also already guarantees unique values will be appended as well.
- It seems that current workflows also by their nature also guarantees the values will be unique.
I’m getting ready to do a release of 12.11 and would like this change to make it in the release if everyone agrees.