Comments on: Namespaces As Function Pointers

By: Simon Richardson

Simon Richardson — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 19:07:27 +0000

I didn’t even notice that there is a slow down in 10.1 just calling functions (private namespace).

By: Simon Richardson

Simon Richardson — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 19:04:05 +0000

Amazingly in the 10.45.2 release player namespaces on functions are quicker than 10.1, why is there a regression?

10.1.85.3
Use namespace usage time: 327
No namespace time: 269

10.45.2
Use namespace usage time: 222
No namespace time: 244

By: Simon Richardson

Simon Richardson — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 18:59:53 +0000

Going to test on the Flash Player 10.0 now (just downloading it) – interestingly though external namespaces for functions are about 2.1% slower than using no namespace over 50000000 iterations, which is slightly worse than variables it seems (not by much though)

By: jackson

jackson — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 18:50:28 +0000

I wonder what kind of results you'd get on Flash Player 10.0. My followup test with Flash Player 10.1 showed a 25% performance drop from the results in this article, so perhaps you're just seeing that drop in your version. One can hope, at least. :)

By: Simon Richardson

Simon Richardson — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 18:45:29 +0000

Interestingly enough, I was thinking about using an external class to hold the name space and I found something interesting. If you use an explicit usage i.e. external_namespace I get an even worse time than a Namespace variable, by about 10% – so nearly 300% worse!

Assuming you have a namespace set up called extern_namespace.as which has the following code:

package
{
    public namespace extern_namespace;
}

Then testing it without the use reveals 8256ms on my 10.1 release player :-s

With the “use” it’s the same as an Explicit namespace you tested above (see bellow). Note: you can’t test it with “use” and “explicit use” (i.e. extern_namespace::val) in the same test as “use” as it will be used by default causing the “explicit use” to be the same speed as “use” on it’s own (hope that makes sense)

package
{
    import flash.display.*;
    import flash.text.*;
    import flash.utils.*;
 
    import extern_namespace;
 
    use namespace extern_namespace;
 
    public class NamespaceTest extends Sprite
    {
 
        extern_namespace var val : String = "doh";
 
        private var val2 : String = "val2";
 
        private var __logger : TextField = new TextField();
 
        public function NamespaceTest()
        {
            __logger.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT;
            addChild(__logger);
 
            var i : int;
            var s : String;
            const NUM_ITERATIONS : int = 50000000;
 
            // Use namespace usage
            var before : int = getTimer();
            for (i = 0; i < NUM_ITERATIONS; ++i)
            {
                s = val;
                // Comment out the above line and "use namespace extern_namespace;" and un-comment the following line. 
                // s = extern_namespace::val;
            }
            log("Use namespace usage time: " + (getTimer() - before));
 
            // No namespace usage
            before = getTimer();
            for (i = 0; i < NUM_ITERATIONS; ++i)
            {
                s = val2;
            }
            log("No namespace time: " + (getTimer() - before));
        }
 
        private function log(msg : *) : void
        {
            __logger.appendText(msg + "\n");
        }
    }
}