You should perhaps also be aware that the values in a static array gets assigned to the array one element at a time. So
[J.Pietschmann]
That's an unpleasant surprise. I was always under the impression statically initialized data was stored along with the string constants, like in C. This means a generated perfect has table wouldn't have much of an advantage over, let's say, a simple binary tree loaded with the values in proper order so that the tree becomes automatically balanced (without rotations like rb-trees do).
I would guess that doing ~6 string compares to navigate the binary tree (with 148 color keywords) is slower than one string hash, ~1.2 int compares and one string compare. But I haven't measured it, so you might be well be right. Many keyword sets for other properties are much smaller and could perhaps benefit from a more suitable collection type.
It would make sense, however, to properly initialitze initial size values for the various hashmaps currently used.
Indeed. Rehashing a HashMap is very fast tho, so I wouldn't expect a major speedup, but it all adds up.
regards, finn
