[shavit]

I'm looking for a fast and reliable caching method.
I have a plugin that uses an individual ArrayList for every client and around 10 extras. Those ArrayLists for individual clients will increase their size by 1 and push 5 float values to the ArrayList every time OnPlayerRunCmd is called, they can be reset every few seconds or even 1 hour.
This will be (and is) degrading the server's performance due to insane increments of the ArrayList.

What's an efficient way of storing such big amounts of data within SourceMod? Thought of using Dynamic but then I'll end up basically creating an infinite amount of handles and that's bad.

[Miu]

Why do you think that's degrading performance? o.o

[Potato Uno]

Did you profile your code before you came to the conclusion that it is degrading performance?

[shavit]

Originally Posted by Miu Why do you think that's degrading performance? o.o

server variance is higher when the plugin is off

Originally Posted by Potato Uno Did you profile your code before you came to the conclusion that it is degrading performance?

actually no, i'll do that now

[Miu]

Originally Posted by shavit server variance is higher when the plugin is off

The stuff in the OP presumably isn't the only thing the plugin does, so why do you think that's what's causing it?

[shavit]

Originally Posted by Miu The stuff in the OP presumably isn't the only thing the plugin does, so why do you think that's what's causing it?

ok nvm i had some background process (nginx with a bad config) that killed my cpu, just a coincidence

[Neuro Toxin]

Fyi: GetArraySize is a performance killer as I learnt from Dynamic.

[shavit]

Originally Posted by Neuro Toxin Fyi: GetArraySize is a performance killer as I learnt from Dynamic.

so instead of array.Length should i create a global variable for the array size and manually increment it every time, or just reduce calls to array.Length?

[klippy]

Originally Posted by Neuro Toxin Fyi: GetArraySize is a performance killer as I learnt from Dynamic.

That doesn't seem right. That's likely the most lightweight native of all ADT Array natives. It just returns one cached value.

[Potato Uno]

Originally Posted by KliPPy That doesn't seem right. That's likely the most lightweight native of all ADT Array natives. It just returns one cached value.

Originally Posted by shavit so instead of array.Length should i create a global variable for the array size and manually increment it every time, or just reduce calls to array.Length?

That is even worse for performance.

Doing ++ in pawn is way worse than doing ++ in C++, because every operation on pawn is a bytecode dispatch on the JIT (push parameters to stack, run assembly on the CPU, send results back to pawn... and that's an oversimplification). Anything you do in pawn will be way slower than equivalent code in C++.

If the SM devs coded it properly (I haven't checked, but I am assuming they did), they would have had an internal length counter inside each adt_array object ("handle" on the pawn side), and did +1 every time you PushArray* and -1 if you remove something. GetArraySize should be O(1) then, as it's just a wrapper that just returns that number. (Basically, it shouldn't do an O(n) loop every time it's called.)

Anyway, the bottom line is... just because something is a killer in performance doesn't mean that your proposed solutions will run faster... because more often than not, they won't (especially if you're trying to beat C++ speed in pawn... lol ain't happening). Stick to the native and find other places in your plugin that are really sucking performance, as opposed to premature optimizing.

FYI: array.Length is the same as GetArraySize internally. The compiler inlines the call to GetArraySize() when you run your script through spcomp. You're not gaining any real-time performance by using what looks like a non-function call (-1 to methodmaps for this reason). Methodmaps are just syntax sugar... (as far as I understand) they don't exist at the smx level. It's still the same bytecode (more or less) as from SM 1.6 or older.