From: Saynatkari <ruby-ml@...>
Date: 2005-05-02T03:43:32+09:00
Subject: Re: collections with values of fixed classes/lengths


Le 1/5/2005, "Eric Mahurin" <eric_mahurin@yahoo.com> a �crit:
>Anybody know of any collection (i.e. Array/Hash) classes where
>the keys and/or values can be assigned a fixed class?  And for
>classes that have variable length objects the length be also
>potentially fixed across the collection?  The main purpose of
>doing this would be memory usage.  You wouldn't have to store
>the class (and possibly object length and pointer to allocated
>space) per element and instead just have the raw data in the
>collection.  You would be able to get the same memory
>utilization as C per element if done right.
>
>Here would be a few examples of what I'm talking about and how
>much space per element it would take:
>
>- array of Floats (64 bits per element)
>- array of N-bit integers (N bits per element)
>- hash of 2-character strings (2*8 bits per key and Object per
>value)
>- array of array of 8 Floats (8*64 bits per line)
>
>For dealing with large data structures, this could be
>invaluable for memory usage.

There is no built-in collection that would behave in that manner;
they are heterogenous. Writing an extension to do this should be
fairly trivial, though.

E

--
template<typename duck>
void quack(duck& d) { d.quack(); }