ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Block Range Index

Imagine you have a really big book with lots and lots of pages. You want to find a specific page in the book, but it would take a really long time to flip through every single page until you find the one you're looking for.

To make things easier, you decide to create a special index at the back of the book. The index tells you the page numbers of certain important topics in the book. For example, it might say that page 10 is about animals, page 20 is about plants, and so on.

Now, if you're looking for information about animals, you can simply look at the index, find the page number for animals (which is 10), and go directly to that page. This saves you a lot of time and effort because you don't have to search through every single page in the book.

A block range index is a similar concept, but instead of using page numbers, it uses numbers to represent different sections of a computer's memory. Think of a computer's memory as a big book with lots of pages, just like the book we talked about earlier.

Sometimes, programs or applications running on a computer need to access certain pieces of information stored in the memory. But just like in the book example, it's not efficient to search through every single memory location to find the specific information.

To make things easier, a block range index is created. Instead of listing the contents of each individual memory location, the index groups together multiple memory locations into blocks based on certain criteria. This allows the computer to quickly find the block of memory where the desired information is located, without having to search through every single memory location.

For example, let's say you're playing a video game and you want to access the game's high score data stored in the computer's memory. The block range index might tell you that the high score data is located in a specific range of memory addresses, let's say from address 5000 to 6000. Instead of searching through every single memory address, the computer can simply look at the index, find the block range for high scores, and go directly to the memory addresses within that range to retrieve the high score data.

In summary, a block range index is like a special index at the back of a book or a map that helps computers quickly find specific pieces of information stored in memory, without having to search through every single memory location. It helps save time and makes the computer's operations more efficient.