Re: [Swig-devel] Use of swigkeys.c/swigkeys.h files

[William S F. <ws...@fu...>]

David Beazley wrote:
> This might be a dumb question, but what was the motivation and  
> intended benefit of adding the files swigkeys.c and swigkeys.h in the  
> Source/Swig directory?   These are the files that replace strings  
> related to hash table lookup (e.g., "type") with a symbolic name like  
> k_type.    Is it a performance hack?  Is it a safety feature?     It  
> sure doesn't make the code easier to read in my opinion.   I wasn't  
> able to find any obvious discussion of this in the CHANGES file.    
> Anyone know?
> 

I'm a bit late joining this thread, but I don't recall any discussion on
this, but I always assumed that Marcelo put this in to reduce the swig
executable size. I can't think of any other reason for it. I can't
imagine how it would reduce performance, but then again compilers are
strange beasts. Marcelo did do a lot of profiling of the code though at
around that time.

As far as I'm concerned, I prefer the compile time aspects of using the
k_xyz approach, but really don't mind if we stick with using the C
strings instead. Of greater importance is what Dave mentioned -
consistency. Implementing and sticking with whichever strategy is chosen
is most important.

William