Re: New map helper method

On 15 Apr 2004, at 12:15, John Wilson wrote:
> On 15 Apr 2004, at 11:57, jastrachan@... wrote:
>> I've added a new helper method to Map called get(key, default) which 
>> takes a default value which is added to the map if the key does not 
>> already exist.
>>
>> So you can swap code like this
>>
>>      classmethods = classmap.classmethods;
>>       if (classmethods == null) {
>> 	classmethods = [];
>> 	classmap.classmethods = classmethods;
>>       }
>>       classmethods.add(method);
>>
>> with
>>
>>     classmap.get("classmethods", []).add(method)
>>
>> the nice thing about this approach is it works for any type of entry, 
>> be it a list, map, bean, whatever. The downside is it creates the 
>> default value each time the method is called.
>>
>
> convenient!
>
> If there was a version which took a closure we could avoid the 
> generation of unnecessary objects:
>
> default = {[]}
>
> for (i in 0..1000000){
> 	classmap.get("classmethods", default).add(method)
> }
>
> so the closure only gets called when the default value is needed

I had the same initial thought, but then I thought, creating a closure 
is about the same cost as creating a new list or map etc. Though I 
guess you could reuse the same closure across various navigations.

Maybe we can have an implementation which takes a closure - though I 
wondered if we'd ever want to use a closure as the value in the map. So 
we might need 2 methods.

c = map.get("valueIsAClosure", someClosure)

or use a closure to create the default value

value = map.getWith("valueCreatedByClosure", factoryClosure)

So this complexity put me off the idea for the moment.

James
-------
http://radio.weblogs.com/0112098/