In article <3ef88efe$1@news.povray.org>,
 "Ray Gardener" <ray### [at] daylongraphicscom> wrote:

> Yeah, I notice that POV uses lots of pointers
> inside scene object structures. I'm wondering of some
> of them can be collapsed to bitmask flags with a
> pointer tacked onto the object only if its associated
> bit flag is on.

Ugh...

Yes, I suppose you *could* do this. It depends on whether you value 
processor or memory more. It would add overhead to check all those 
flags, as well as code complexity making the program harder to maintain 
and extend, and increasing worst-case memory consumption, all for very 
little benefit. Memory usage could be improved in places, and data 
structures shifted around for more efficient general use, but I don't 
think this idea will be useful for anything but than the most 
memory-hungry structures.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

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