String Literal Struct Accessor to Hash Optimization

[tinkerer-red]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Would be nice if string literals would be converted into hash look ups when using struct_get, struct_exists, or the [$ ""] operator at compile time.

evidence of this not happening:
YYC:

VM:

Describe the solution you'd like

when a string literal is given to a struct accessor it should be converted into a hash look up with a real literal at compile time.

Describe alternatives you've considered

adding a build script to my projects to optimize.

Using forceinline functions with statics which will cache the hash the first time then always returns that. But this does not actually work.

Additional context

No response

[rwkay]

Fixed in 2024.2 - optimisations have been added

• variable_struct_get is now optimised if the second parameter is a constant string e.g if variable_struct_get( a, "hello" ) it now gets optimised to a.hello
  • variable_struct_set is now optimised if the second parameter is a constant string e.g. variable_struct_set( a, "hello", 20) is optimised to be a.hello = 20

NOTE: a[$ "hello" ] = 20 is already turned into variable_struct_set( a, "hello", 20) as part of the accessor framework similarly any reference to the value a[$ "hello" ] is turned into variable_struct_get( a, "hello" ). So this accomplishes the desired result.

My test code for this is

var a = { Hello : 20 };

var b = a[$ "Hello" ];
a[$ "foo" ] = "foo";
show_debug_message( $"b = {b},a = {a}" );

[gnysek]

@rwkay if it's optimised this way, then it would break existing functionality as variable_struct_get can return undefined if property doesn't exist, while a.hello would crash game in that case.
Should it be that variable_struct_get( a, "hello" ) is optimised to a.hello ?? undefined ?

Or, alternatively, it's time for ?. operator...

[tinkerer-red]

..or struct_set_from_hash(a, <"hello" hash litteral>) which does return undefined

[rwkay]

OK this is now fixed for the case where hello does not exist on a it now returns undefined

variable_struct_get is now optimised if the second parameter is a constant string e.g if variable_struct_get( a, "hello" ) it now gets optimised to struct_get_from_hash( a, #"hello" ) where #"hello" is the hash for the variable named hello

[tinkerer-red]

Does that mean we can now use hash literals? like for instance if I want to pass #"hello" into a function such as trigger_event(#"onCollide")

[rwkay]

No it is just a notation I was using to describe what is happening it is not GML syntax