[Cdk-devel] RFC #13 use of get/setFlag and get/setPointer in ChemObject

[Egon W. <el...@ca...>]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 RFC CDK #13

 Name: use of get/setFlag and get/setPointer in ChemObject
 Proposed: 2003-02-27

 PROPOSAL

The implementation of public get/setFlag and get/setPointer method 
deprecating the direct use of the of the flags[] and pointer[] arrays.

The API for these methods is proposed to be:

public void setFlag(int flag_type, boolean flag_value);
public boolean getFlag(int flag_type)

public void setPointer(int pointer_type, Vector pointer_value);
public boolean getPointer(int pointer_type)

This proposal deliberately does not propose how to implement these
methods, allowing alternative and parallel implementations. 

 REASON

At this moment it is not possible to define an interface some ChemObject
may need to implement (read interface Atom, see RFC #8) which includes
the access to the fields in ChemObject. More specifically, ChemObject
currently uses direct access to its flags[] field, which cannot be defined
in the interface, which results in the need to cast classes extending
ChemObject to ChemObject before the field can be accessed.

In addition to this, use of the get/set method may improve CDK performance 
considerably (see discussion on cdk-devel@ in 2003-02:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=2178&max_rows=25&style=ultimate&viewmonth=200302).


--------------------------------------------------------------------------