Re: [Vala] can a struct be stored in a map?

[Stefan Risberg <steffenomak gmail com>]

On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 01:20:12PM -0700, Evan Nemerson wrote:
> On Sat, 2012-06-30 at 12:39 -0700, Charles Hixson wrote:
> > My first take is that the answer is no, and I'm enough of a neophyte that
> >
> > words.vala:53.29-53.33: error: `Entry' is not a supported generic type argument, use `?' to box value 
> > types
> >
> > ...
> >
> >      HashMap<int32, Entry>     ids;
>
> HashMap<int32, Entry?> ids;
>
> > currently I'm avoiding the problem by converting the struct to a class, 
> > and at least in this case that's a reasonable approach, (or, of course, 
> > I could probably store a pointer to the struct, but in my eyes one of 
> > the advantages of Vala is that it minimizes the number of times I need 
> > to explicitly deal with pointers).
>
> It's generally best to void structs unless you are concerned about
> performance, and even then you have to be careful.  structs are
> allocated on the stack and aren't reference counted or registered with
> the GObject type system, so they can be much faster when used properly.
> However, they are harder to use and easy to misuse.  It is easy to
> accidentally copy them, which can easily counteract their performance
> benefits.
>
>
> -Evan
>
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But if you don't need reference counting and just need data holding like in
his example wouldn't a struct be much better then a class?

  Stefan