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Large objects - fast equality test

Started by robert_s Jun 10, 2004 at 11:06 AM 4 replies 1.6k views

Original Post

Jun 10, 2004 at 11:06 AM

Hi. I am just wondering how to quickly compare two objects if they are equal or not. eg. if( object1 == object2 ) return true; I know I can add == comparison operator in my class: eg. class Object { int m_id; public: bool operator== (const Object & obj) { if (m_id == obj.m_id) { return TRUE; } } but then what do I do if I have a huge object with many members that store list of pointers and other objects or list of vertices storing 3000 vertices? I dont thik it would be wise to comapre each member (eg. vertex list vertex-by-vertex)in the Object class to determine if the two objects Obj1 and Obj2 are equal. It would take ages!! Is there any clever way of doing it. My problem is that I have a global list of Objects stored in vector container. vector<objects*>vlist; I select an object randomly from the list of objects and I pass that object to some other function. eg.

// 'loc_obj' is pointing at one of those objects in 'vlist' but I dont know at this point which object this is. I mean I dont know which index in the list it is.

bool ObjFound( Object *loc_obj)
{
   for( loop through vlist of objects to the end)
   {
      // see if loc_obj is one of those in the list

      if( vlist[i] == loc_obj )return true;
   }
}

I know the code is meaningless but its just a quick problem illustration

How can I compare those objects fast? [edited by - robert_s on June 10, 2004 12:22:12 PM]

Zipster

511

Zipster

Jun 10, 2004 at 12:09 PM

quote:
but then what do I do if I have a huge object with many members that store list of pointers and other objects or list of vertices storing 3000 vertices?
I dont thik it would be wise to comapre each member (eg. vertex list vertex-by-vertex)in the Object class to determine if the two objects Obj1 and Obj2 are equal. It would take ages!!
Is there any clever way of doing it.

Don''t use the raw vertex data as a way of comparing your objects. Use some other form of ID system that only compares maybe a few members.

And if you sort your object list, you can use something besides a linear search, like a binary search.

thezensunni

Jun 10, 2004 at 4:40 PM

have a model ID in the model class (an int for example)
make sure this modelID is unique.

then comparing 2 models is just a single int comparision.


class Model
{
private:
   static int s_modelID = 0;
   int modelID;

   Model()
   {
       s_modelID++;
       modelID == s_modelID;
   }

   Model& operator==(Model& m)
   {
       return (m.modelID == this.modelID);
   }
};

now there is plenty of things to keep into consideration, like threadsafety (will you create model instances from more then one thread? How does it behave under a copy etc, but this is the basic gist of it..

(pseudo code, not compiled)

Etnu

108

Etnu

Jun 10, 2004 at 7:33 PM

If you want to see if they''re the *EXACT* same object, you could use pointer comparisons.

If you just want to see if they''re "equivilent" (for something like eliminating duplicated objects), your best bet would be to
overload == to compare just certain data members.

By default, == compares the objects bit for bit, which is fine for objects that don''t contain pointers. An array of vertices would always fail the comparison, though, since every object would have a different pointer.

If you''re using this for comparing geometry, I''m going to go out on a limb here and say that you''re doing something wrong already. You should never have any need for 2 instances of the exact same geometry loaded into memory, unless you''re planning on altering one of them.

robert_s

Author

robert_s

Jun 11, 2004 at 8:43 AM

Thank you.
Etnu. No, I dont have same object instances loaded in memory. I have unique objects loaded into a container and I manipulate each object using a pointer to each object. I guess comparing address is the easiest option as the objects are constants.
Thanks all.

fooman

Jun 11, 2004 at 9:38 AM


bool cBla::operator== (cBla *blub)
{
  for(unsigned int i=sizeof(cBla), unsigned char *a = (unsigned char*)this, unsigned char* b = (unsigned char*)blub;i>0;--i,++a,++b)
    if(*a != *b) return false;
  return true;
};

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