Will help you fix all those UI-related wasteful allocations and GC bumps - hardly noticeable on PC but costly for mobile VR/AR/XR.
How? Pre-generate all the string variants once and replace runtime allocations with a single dictionary lookup. Constant cost, GC bumps are gone; problem solved.
Use cases:
- Timers (!)
- Any kind of UI fields where number of variants is limited & those can be pre-generated procedurally
You provide a hash function and a string formatting method - all in a constructor call during field initialization. This will generate all the variants.
Once you want to get a string use index operator text = cache[key]
Whole idea is basically this, but encapsulated in a class:
Dictionary<HASH,string> table;
Func<HASH,string> hashToString;
Func<KEY,HASH> hashFunction;using System;
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.UI;
public class TestCacheIntString : MonoBehaviour
{
public Text _displaySeconds;
public Text _displayMinutes;
public Text _displayHours;
public Text _displayDays;
public Text _displayMilliSeconds;
public double _time = 0;
CacheIntString cacheSeconds = new CacheIntString(
(seconds)=>seconds%60 , //describe how seconds (key) will be translated to useful value (hash)
(second)=>second.ToString("00") //you describe how string is built based on given value (hash)
, 0 , 59 , 1 //initialization range and step, so cache will be warmed up and ready
);
CacheIntString cacheMinutes = new CacheIntString(
(seconds)=>seconds/60%60 , // this translates input seconds to minutes
(minute)=>minute.ToString("00") // this translates minute to string
, 0 , 60 , 60 //minutes needs a step of 60 seconds
);
CacheIntString cacheHours = new CacheIntString(
(seconds)=>seconds/(60*60)%24 , // this translates input seconds to hours
(hour)=>hour.ToString("00") , // this translates hour to string
0 , 24 , 60*60 //hours needs a step of 60*60 seconds
);
CacheIntString cacheDays = new CacheIntString(
(seconds)=>seconds/(60*60*24) , // this translates input seconds to days
(day)=>day.ToString() , // this translates day to string
0 , 31 , 60*60*24 //days needs a step of 60*60*24 seconds
);
CacheDoubleIntString cacheMilliSeconds = new CacheDoubleIntString(
(seconds)=>(int)System.Math.Round(seconds%1d*1000d) , //extract 3 decimal places
(second)=>second.ToString("000")
, 0d , 0.999d , 0.001d //1ms step
);
void Update ()
{
_time += Time.deltaTime;
int seconds = Mathf.FloorToInt( (float)_time );
_displaySeconds.text = cacheSeconds[ seconds ];
_displayMinutes.text = cacheMinutes[ seconds ];
_displayHours.text = cacheHours[ seconds ];
_displayDays.text = cacheDays[ seconds ];
_displayMilliSeconds.text = cacheMilliSeconds[ _time ];
}
}