5.2 Response Ordering

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The queries backing enumerations and lookups carry no ORDER BY, and a UNION ALL across the two stores yields rows in whatever order SQLite produces them. That order is not stable across calls.

The kernel walks enumeration results by dense index across repeated calls, so an unstable order would make that walk duplicate or drop entries. loregd therefore sorts every affected array into a canonical order before encoding a response:

ResponseSorted by
RSI_LOOKUP path entrieslayer, then sequence
RSI_ENUM_CHILDREN childrenfolded child name
RSI_ENUM_CHILDREN per-child entrieslayer, then sequence
RSI_QUERY_VALUES value entriesfolded value name, then layer, then sequence
RSI_QUERY_VALUES blanket tombstonesfolded layer name, then sequence
RSI_DELETE_LAYER orphan GUIDsascending GUID, compared bytewise
Key-metadata blocks, in any responseascending GUID, compared bytewise

This ordering is a wire-stability guarantee only. It has no bearing on layer resolution, which is order-independent — the kernel selects a maximum, not a first match.

5.2.1 Arrays assembled outside one query #

Two of those arrays are not a single query's result set. They are assembled first and sorted afterwards:

  • The blanket-tombstone array in an RSI_QUERY_VALUES response comes from its own UNION ALL, separate from the value entries it travels beside, and takes the same order they do.
  • The orphan-GUID array in an RSI_DELETE_LAYER response is the concatenation of every registered hive's orphan set. That walk ranges a Go map, whose iteration order is randomised, so the array is sorted bytewise before it is encoded.

5.2.2 Child display names #

RSI_ENUM_CHILDREN groups rows by child_name_folded and emits one child block per folded name, carrying a display name taken from the child_name column.

Where two rows share a folded name but differ in stored case — Foo in one store and FOO in the other, say — the display name emitted is the lower of the two bytewise, which is a property of the set rather than of the order the union produced. Both the order of children and the case of the name reported for each are therefore stable across calls.

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