Unit 2: reading notes

Chapter 1.2
In this part, the auther introduced two different ways to construct the inverted index: the singly linked lists and the variable length array. The former have the advantage of easier insertion of documents compared to the latter. It is also said that "If updates are relatively infrequent, variable length arrays will be more compact and faster to traverse". The former have overheads of pointers, thus, they need more storage space. Moreover, because the former do not occupy a continuous storage space, they need more time to traverse from one node to another. My question is, can Prof introduce more about the variable length array, such as how an item is inserted, deleted to the array, and if there is a limit for the size of variable length array. If there is a limit for the size of the array, what the system will do when the number of items exceeds the limit? Therefore, we could have a better understanding about the weakness and strenths for these two ways.