[boost] Re: Containers used as caches (Was: live_ptr => live_container / live_iterator)

From: Nathan Myers (ncm_at_[hidden])
Date: 1999-08-29 18:04:26

Andy Glew wrote:
> Since I cannot afford the overhead of virtual functions in many places
> (measured: 20% slowdown) I explicitly design data structures for use
> in inheritance hierarchies, statically overriding methods. 

For this usage pattern, templates with (partial) specialization would 
probably be a more appropriate mechanism.  It would also allow inlining
and the optimizations inlining enables, as well as metaprogramming
techniques.  If 20% overhead is a problem, surely a 2x-5x speedup
is attractive?

Probably Boost will eventually have many cases where both a 
polymorphic and a template-based library do approximately the 
same job.

Nathan Myers
ncm_at_[hidden]