Class: SignedWordArray

• Inheritance
• Description
• Related information
• Class protocol
  • queries

Inheritance:

   Object
   |
   +--Collection
      |
      +--SequenceableCollection
         |
         +--ArrayedCollection
            |
            +--UninterpretedBytes
               |
               +--AbstractNumberVector
                  |
                  +--UnboxedIntegerArray
                     |
                     +--SignedWordArray

Package:

stx:libbasic

Category:

Collections-Arrayed

Version:

rev: 1.3 date: 2019/03/24 11:26:50

user: cg

file: SignedWordArray.st directory: libbasic

module: stx stc-classLibrary: libbasic

Author:

Claus Gittinger

Description:

SignedWordArrays store 16bit signed integers in the range 16r-8000..16r7FFF.
They are much like WordArrays, but the values stored are signed.
In contrast to normal arrays (which store pointers to their elements),
signedWordArrays store the values in a dense & compact way. 
Since the representation fits the underlying C-language systems representation
of signed int16's, this is also useful to pass bulk data to c primitive code.

Therefore, SignedWordArrays can be used to hold bulk data in a more compact way.
    For example:
        Array new:100000 withAll:1
    requires 400k of object memory;

    in contrast,
        SignedWordArray new:100000 withAll:1
    only requires half of it.

[memory requirements:]
    OBJ-HEADER + (size * 2)


[caveat:]
    should probably be renamed to SignedInt16Array

Related information:

    ByteArray
    WordArray
    BooleanArray
    FloatArray
    DoubleArray
    Array
    IntegerArray
    LongIntegerArray
    SignedLongIntegerArray

Class protocol:

 elementByteSize

for bit-like containers, return the number of bytes stored per element.
Here, 2 is returned

 maxVal

the maximum value which can be stored in instances of me.
For SignedWordArrays, this is 16r7FFF (largest 16bit signed int)

 minVal

the minimum value which can be stored in instances of me.
For SignedWordArrays, this is -16r8000 (smallest 16bit signed int)