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[java] Casting

Started by Jonbca Nov 7, 2002 at 8:13 AM 0 replies 200+ views

Original Post

Nov 7, 2002 at 8:13 AM

I''m building a simple (they all start off simple, don''t they) game engine for a final project at my school. I''m implementing a resource manager for the engine. The way I''m implementing it is the have a base abstract class Node which has other classes(AudioNode, ImageNode) devrived from it. I have a linked list that is used to muve through the data. I''m using the Node class as the class to pint to the next node which makes it that I haveto cast all the nodes into their proper type when I want to use them. THis all is working, but I recently read that preforming casts is an expensive operation. What my question is, is should I keep the current method, make seperate linked lists for all the different classes, or something else?

Petr Stedry

Nov 7, 2002 at 8:47 AM

Hi,

Without more background I can not help you much.

Why did you make a design like this ?
What does the Node class definition contain ? What''s common among those nodes (Audio, Image ...) that you put it into one base class for all those parts ?

And about performing casts ....

If you don''t need to have all those Nodes in one list, don''t do that - you prevent all that casts in case they would prove costly (but I really doubt it - IMHO a cast can be done in constant time).

But always make the program work first and optimize it afterwards!

If you''re looking for ways to optimize your code, then ask yourself:

am I using the appropriate containers (LinkedLists retain order, ArrayLists for indexed element retrieval, HashMaps give key-value mappings, TreeSets keep elements ordered)
are there not many superfluous objects created ?
do I use buffered I/O operations?
et cetera, et cetera ...

That will have to do for the info you provided.

have a nice day/night (depending on your timezone)

Petr Stedry

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