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Re: Re[4]: additional methods in NSMutableString
From: |
Markus Hitter |
Subject: |
Re: Re[4]: additional methods in NSMutableString |
Date: |
Fri, 7 Jan 2005 11:12:51 +0100 |
Am 06.01.2005 um 20:03 schrieb Manuel Guesdon:
o about performances, ...
Well, you'll have to run some benchmarks to find out.
Surely, you already know NAT!'s great article(s) about Objective C
optimization: <http://www.mulle-kybernetik.com/artikel/Optimization/>.
o will it be possible to add a method in NSMutableString like this:
-setCharacters length: ...
Just to add a more general comment ...
One of the big advantages of OpenStep / Cocoa is it's simple, easy to
remember API.
Adding methods also has disadvantages:
- GNUstep code becomes more complex and more difficult to maintain.
In your example, any change to your extensions have to be kept in sync
with the methods they replace. You have to write and maintain
documentation etc. .
- Overall performance degrades: More methods for the dynamic linker to
consider, bigger libraries to load.
- Writing applications becomes more difficult since you have to choose
from a bigger set of methods. If you have several methods to solve one
problem and you just ignore some of them because you have lost
overview, the whole point of API extension is moot.
- Compatibility with OpenStep / Cocoa degrades: You have to work around
these extensions if you want to have portable code. Portability is a
big plus of GNUstep.
- Adding a method fitting to a particular situation doesn't
automatically increase performance in this situation.
In your case, most of the point of NSStrings over NSMutableStrings is
better performance. I can well imagine creation of a few temporary
NSStrings to perform better or almost as good as some specialized
NSMutableString methods.
- For coding convenience, you get the same result with much less work
by adding a category in your personal code base only.
Please check the results of your work and consider, wether it makes
sense to change the GNUstep API, carefully.
Thanks,
Markus
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Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter
http://www.jump-ing.de/