From: Jonathan Leighton <lists@...>
Date: 2006-01-12T19:09:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Looking up properties and speed

On Thu, 2006-01-12 at 11:05 +0900, David Vallner wrote:
> Hmm. Accessing the property should be slower, because it involves a 
> method call.
> 
> <rant>
> BUT! Quite a few guides on coding style would say temporary variables 
> should be avoided whenever possible in clean OO code and replaced with 
> queries (computed property getters). And using a temporary variable only 
> to cheat the interpreter is plain wrong. Avoid. The speed improvement 
> you gain will most likely be next to insignificant, and if not, you 
> still should never optimize without profiling the code first.
> 
> That said, the code you show is more likely to end up refactored as a 
> method of ``obj'', where you could access the instance variable 
> directly. A method that only manipulates data on another object indeed 
> should be a method of that object.
> 
> Suggested reading: Martin Fowler's "Refactoring...", a timeless, and IMO 
> highly respected classic.
> </rant>

Thanks for the input and explanation. It *was* more a theoretical
question than something I was actually considering as general coding
practise -- I find it strangely interesting to find out which ways of
doing things are faster or slower and why.

Anyway, thanks everyone

Jon

-- 
Jonathan Leighton
http://turnipspatch.com/ | http://jonathanleighton.com/ | http://digital-proof.org/