There are probably hundreds of questions about Java Collections vs. arrays, but this is something I really didn't expect.
I am developing a server for my game, and to communicate between the client and server you need to send packets (obviously), so I did some tests which Collection (or array) I could use best to handle them, HashMap, ArrayList and a PacketHandler array. And the outcome is very unexpected to me, because the ArrayList wins.
The packet handling structure is just like dictionary usage (index to PacketHandler), and because an array is the most primitive form of dictionary use I thought that would easily perform better than an ArrayList. Could someone explain me why this is?
My test
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Random;
public class Main {
/**
* Packet handler interface.
*/
private interface PacketHandler {
void handle();
}
/**
* A dummy packet handler.
*/
private class DummyPacketHandler implements PacketHandler {
@Override
public void handle() { }
}
public Main() {
Random r = new Random();
PacketHandler[] handlers = new PacketHandler[256];
HashMap<Integer, PacketHandler> m = new HashMap<Integer, PacketHandler>();
ArrayList<PacketHandler> list = new ArrayList<PacketHandler>();
// packet handler initialization
for (int i = 0; i < 255; i++) {
DummyPacketHandler p = new DummyPacketHandler();
handlers[i] = p;
m.put(new Integer(i), p);
list.add(p);
}
// array
long time = System.currentTimeMillis();
for (int i = 0; i < 10000000; i++)
handlers[r.nextInt(255)].handle();
System.out.println((System.currentTimeMillis() - time));
// hashmap
time = System.currentTimeMillis();
for (int i = 0; i < 10000000; i++)
m.get(new Integer(r.nextInt(255))).handle();
System.out.println((System.currentTimeMillis() - time));
// arraylist
time = System.currentTimeMillis();
for (int i = 0; i < 10000000; i++)
list.get(r.nextInt(255)).handle();
System.out.println((System.currentTimeMillis() - time));
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
new Main();
}
}
I think the problem is quite solved, thanks everybody