🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <38D8E693.34731AA0@cyberdude.com>, dataman@cyberdude.com wrote:

>What is the fastest way for  accessing a member  in  a class.

struct DATA

class A {
public:
    const DATA& get_data() const          { return data; }
    void        set_data( const DATA& d ) { data = d; }
private:
    DATA data;
};

(Some people don't like actually having the words 'get' and 'set' in the
methods. I like them because it makes things much easer when I'm doing a
global search for all the places where data is changed.)

If you find yourself diving into a chain of class/structs, then apply a
little of the law of demeter. IE

if you have:

struct DATA {
    int x;
    int y;
};

And you are doing a lot of:

A myA;
myA.get_data().x;
myA.get_data().y;

Then you should write A like this:

class A {
public:
    int get_x() const { return data.x; }
    int get_y() const { return data.y; }
private:
    DATA data;
};

The above is every bit as fast as:

struct DATA {
    int x;
    int y;
};

struct A {
    DATA data;
};