Atom Structure
Lightweight representation of a fixed string.
NuGet/Assembly: Carmenta.Engine.5.16.2.nupkg (in the CECore assembly)
Syntax
public struct Atom :
System.IComparable<Atom>,
System.IEquatable<Atom>Remarks
An Atom is a lightweight representation of a fixed string. Atoms are used mainly to identify values in an AttributeSet.
The reason for using atoms instead of strings is performance. Looking up attribute values is a very frequent operation during view updates, so to avoid costly string comparisons, atoms are used instead.
An application that often accesses feature attributes, perhaps updating hundreds of features every second, should create the atoms it uses just once, and then reuse them.
However, if the application only rarely uses atoms, it may choose to recreate them as they are needed. This will also work, and if it doesn't happen frequently, the performance difference will be negligible.
Example
public static void AtomExample()
{
Atom atom = Atom.Empty;
Console.WriteLine("atom == Atom.Empty: {0}", atom == Atom.Empty);
Atom name = new Atom("NAME");
Console.WriteLine("name != Atom.Empty: {0}", atom != Atom.Empty);
Console.WriteLine("name == atom: {0}", name == atom);
Console.WriteLine(name.ToString());
}
// This example produces the following output:
//
//atom == Atom.Empty: True
//name != Atom.Empty: True
//name == atom: False
//NAME
Platforms
Windows, Linux, Android
Atom Members
The Atom type has the following members.
Constructors
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Atom | Initializes a new instance of the Atom class. |
Properties
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
 Empty | Gets the empty Atom. |
Methods
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| CompareTo | Compares this Atom with another Atom. |
| Equals | Overloaded. Determines whether two Atom objects have the same value. |
| GetHashCode | Returns the hash code for this Atom. |
| Operator == | Determines whether two specified Atom objects have the same value. |
| Operator != | Determines whether two specified Atom objects have different values. |
| ToString | Returns a String (not available in C#) that the current Atom represents. |