On Friday, 15 November 2013 at 13:32:38 UTC, Mikko Ronkainen
wrote:
Ok, thanks! That linked list cache thrashing was just the thing
I knew that I don't know :)
Let's say I just use dynamic array and grow it when adding new
particles to the system, and when particles die, just set their
dead flag on. This means that, when adding a new particle, I
need to scan the array first for possible dead particles that
can be reused. Is there some trick that could be used here to
reduce excessive searching/iteration?
Instead of having a "dead flag", you could swap (
http://dlang.org/phobos/std_algorithm.html#swap ) the dying
particle with the last particle in the list and then decrement
the list's length.
Two assumptions: 1, you don't have pointers to particles
anywhere. 2, when a particle "dies" it knows about the list and
its position in the list.
By default (using the default GC and everything), D does not
reallocate a dynamic array every time you change the length (even
increasing it), so this will still be okay with allocations.
