Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] ew function(s) proto_tree_new_item_get_val_..()

[Jeff Morriss <jeff.morriss.ws@xxxxxxxxx>]

Anders Broman wrote:
> Jaap Keuter skrev 2011-01-12 22:42:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Oke, so now the reason is CPU cycles. Show the profiling; is it 
> > *really* worth it? There was a recent thread around tvb_get_ptr() as 
> > being far more efficient. Profiling disproved that.

Actually I did eventually find Martin's code to be faster than mine, it 
just took a better method (tshark instead of GUI) and a much bigger 
capture file (or testing on a CPU where memcpy()s are expensive).

> ? speed was the whole point. Unfortunately I'm not sure how to profile 
> it. But if no one thinks it's
> a good idea I'll drop it.

Well, I can also see a point because it reduces the lines of code a 
dissector writer needs in these cases.  (I too have found it mildly 
annoying when I need to add_item() then tvb_get...() the same thing 
because I need to test its value.)

In Lua such a function would be great because one function could return 
any type of FT_XXX, but...  I'm not sure it would be worth another 
15-20(? maybe I'm exaggerating?) proto_tree_add_*() functions: there's 
already too many...

> > I stand by keeping your API orthogonal and clean.
> What's orthogonal?

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal#Computer_science

> Orthogonality is a system design property facilitating feasibility and compactness of complex designs.