I have just made a series of changes to property processing in
alt.design, intended to 1) make the process look more familiar to Java
familiars, and 2) speed things up a bit.
property = (Property)(pclass.newInstance());
properties[propindex] = property;
// Set inheritance value
if ((inherited[propindex]
= pclass.getField("inherited").getInt(null))
!= Property.NO)
inheritedprops.set(propindex);
// Set datatypes
datatypes[propindex] = pclass.getField("dataTypes").getInt(null);
// Set initialValueTypes
initialValueTypes[propindex] =
pclass.getField("initialValueType").getInt(null);
traitMappings[propindex] =
pclass.getField("traitMapping").getInt(null);
Basically, the foregoing code, which used reflection to obtain
public static fixed int
vales from the Property sub-classes, has been replaced by
// Instantiate the class
property = (Property)(pclass.newInstance());
properties[propindex] = property;
// Set inheritance value
if ((inherited[propindex]
= property.getInherited())
!= Property.NO)
inheritedprops.set(propindex);
// Set datatypes
datatypes[propindex] = property.getDataTypes();
// Set initialValueTypes
initialValueTypes[propindex] = property.getInitialValueType();
traitMappings[propindex] = property.getTraitMapping();
relying on the newly added getters in Property and its subclasses.
Because of all the bad press for reflection, I expected to see an
improvement of the speed of processing. I was disappointed in this.
Unfortunately, I have only a poorly endowed laptop at the moment, so it
is difficult to get sound measurements while Eclipse and Mozilla are
running, but the results were inconclusive, sometimes recording faster
times for the original code, sometimes for the new version. In any
case, the approach I originally took incurs no performance penalty under
1.4, and may even be slightly faster.
However, given the disturbance which seems to overcome Java programmers
when face by code which is not strictly OO, I have checked in the new
version. It may make cross-fertilization with Finn's work easier.
Peter
--
Peter B. West <http://www.powerup.com.au/~pbwest/resume.html>
