PhD Thesis - staffweb - University of Greenwich

APPENDIX 5 : DATA DICTIONARY FOR GEOMETRY CLASSES IN SMARTFIREIt should be noted that most of the arrays that hold geometry data are declared asdynamic arrays of pointers to objects (i.e. G_Class ** g_object_array; ). This is not as flexible as alinked list storage but does have the advantage of allowing individual elements of the array to bereplaced with new members if required. It is also possible to extend the storage quite simply bycopying the pointers into a temporary array, extending the original array and then copying backthe pointers. This is clearly a much more efficient strategy than copying the objects themselves,particularly for cases where the geometry objects contain significant amounts of data as membervariables.Some of the class functions (and data members) described in this document are forinternal class use and should not be used by class users. This is particularly true of theGroup_Class where garbage collection routines are defined.Appendix 11.5 Page 145-4 4