From: Dean Sturtevant (deansturtevant_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-01-21 21:27:24
I find it hard to imagine a case where std::swap is more efficient
than assignment, unless the assignment is coded inefficiently. Can
you provide an example where that might not be the case?
--- In boost_at_[hidden], "Paul Moore" <gustav_at_m...> wrote:
> I have a small optimisation issue - in the rational class, the gcd
> operation (one of the key hotspots) repeatedly executes
>
> IntType r(n%m);
> n = m;
> m = r;
>
> This could be replaced with
>
> IntType r(n%m);
> std::swap(n,m)
> std::swap(m,r);
>
> For built-in types, this is notably less efficient, as it will do 6
> assignments as opposed to 2. However, for a user-defined type
> which may have a highly optimised swap, it could be far more
> efficient.
>
> Is there any way of using the most efficient version in each case -
> or alternatively would it make sense to use the swap version in all
> cases? (I feel that this is a bad case of premature optimisation,
as
> we don't yet have a common candidate for an unlimited-precision
> integer type to use with rational<>)
>
> [[ As usual, this could be handled by explicit specialisation - but
I
> don't feel that is appropriate here. ]]
>
> This came to me when I was writing a section for the
> documentation covering performance issues. If I don't use swap(), I
> feel that it might be worth pointing this out in this section.
>
> BTW, I suspect this means that rational<> should provide a swap()
> specialisation, to delegate to (potential) swap() specialisations
for
> IntType. Can anyone remind me what the canonical form of swap()
> is?
>
> Paul