Am 06.06.2006 um 17:26 schrieb Richard Frith-Macdonald:
On 2 Jun 2006, at 10:24, Lloyd Dupont wrote:
In NSAttributedString I found the following code (snippets)
======= NSAttributedString.m (snippets) ==============
static SEL getSel;
@implementation NSAttributedString
+ (void) initialize
{
if (self == [NSAttributedString class])
{
getSel = @selector(attributesAtIndex:effectiveRange:);
}
}
- (NSDictionary*) attributesAtIndex: (unsigned int)index
longestEffectiveRange: (NSRange*)aRange
inRange: (NSRange)rangeLimit
{
NSDictionary *attrDictionary;
IMP getImp;
getImp = [self methodForSelector: getSel];
attrDictionary = (*getImp)(self, getSel, index, aRange);
return attrDictionary;
}
@end
===========================================
Now I wonder.....
Why in Hell write that?
I mean what's wrong with:
attrDictionary = [self attributesAtIndex: index effectiveRange:
aRange]
Why replace it by:
static SEL getSel;
getSel = @selector(attributesAtIndex:effectiveRange:);
getImp = [self methodForSelector: getSel];
attrDictionary = (*getImp)(self, getSel, index, aRange);
Yes, why????
why GNUstep code work so hard at being so obscure???
Well if the code was as listed above it would be really stupid ...
but of course it's not.
In fact the call to (*getImp)(self, getSel, index, aRange) is done
inside a loop and might get called a lot of times.
Where the attributed string is actually a large document that can
make a significant difference to performance by removing method
lookup overheads.
wouldn't some comments in the code at such places make things a lot
clearer? A simple
// caching for perfomance
would have avoided some confusion and would definitely help newcomers
to get easier access to GNUstep coding. Otherwise it looks like
voodoo and confuses people. Some short comments on obscure place
sometimes help a lot. You don't need to write novels. Easy access to
the code is important to involve more developers.
Most (maybe all) cases where the code caches method implementations
are for situations where it's been tuned for performance because
the method call overheads were becoming an issue. By the nature of
things this needs to be done mostly in heavily used parts of the
base library ... and the fact that it's done there does *NOT* in
any way imply that it's sensible to do that sort of thing routinely
in applications (or other libraries). That is to say, the base
library source is a good example of how to write a base/foundation
library, not a good example of how to write general code. I almost
never cache method implementations in my appllication code.
regards, Lars
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