andrew-raphael-lukasik / CacheStrings

Gets rid of garbage allocations for numerical clocks, counters etc. Recommended for mobile VR/AR/XR.

CacheStrings

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

How does it work?

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;

How to use it?

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 ];
    }
    
}