Re: Proposal: New CollationKey Byte Representation API additions

This would be a really useful enhancement to the ICU.

Since you are almost certainly converting any String arguments into 
character arrays internally, is there any chance of adding the following as 
well?

public RawCollationKey getRawCollationKey(char [] source, int offset,
	int count, RawCollationKey key)

It's a shame if the caller has a character array (for efficiency) to have to 
create a String to pass to the ICU which then allocates a character array. 
Even if the ICU is using an internal buffer and not allocating one every 
time, couldn't it just as well copy from a source array instead of a String?

Thanks.

Geoff Mottram
Minaret Corp.
[email protected]


syn wee wrote:
> Proposal: Addition of ByteArrayWrapper class, RawCollationKey class and 
> getRawCollationKey method.
> 
> Please respond with comments by Oct 3rd 2003.
> 
> This proposal is related to jitterbug 2732, 
> http://www.jtcsv.com/cgibin/icu-bugs?findid=2732.
> 
> ICU recommends the use and storage of CollationKeys in a system where 
> comparison are to be done to the same String multiple times. See 
> http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/doc/com/ibm/icu/text/RuleBasedCollator.html#getCollationKey(java.lang.String). 
> 
> However, calling the current getCollationKey() method creates a new 
> CollationKey object everytime and access to the internal CollationKey 
> byte representation returns a copy of the byte array. To enable further 
> optimization for speed critical systems, ICU proposes the following 
> classes and method to allow user a more direct access to the byte 
> representation of the CollationKey.
> 
> New class ByteArrayWrapper to reside in package com.ibm.icu.util
> /**
> * A simple wrapper utility class
> */
> public class ByteArrayWrapper {
>    public byte[] bytes;
>    /**
>     * Size of the internal byte array used. Different from bytes.length, 
> size will be <= bytes.length.
>     */
>    public int size;
>    /**
>     *Ensure that the byte array is at least of length minCapacity.     
> *If the byte array is null or its length is less than minCapacity, a new 
> byte array of
>     * length minCapacity will be allocated.  The contents of the array 
> (between 0 and size)
>     * remain unchanged.
>     */
>    public void ensureCapacity(int capacity)
> }
> 
> New class RawCollationKey to reside in package com.ibm.icu.text.
> 
> /**
> * Simple class wrapper to store the internal byte representation of a 
> CollationKey.
> * Unlike the CollationKey, this class do not contain information on the 
> source
> * string the sort order represents.
> * RawCollationKey is mutable and users can reuse its objects with the 
> method in
> * RuleBasedCollator.getRawCollationKey(..).
> */
> public final class RawCollationKey extends ByteArrayWrapper {
>    /**
>     * Default constructor, internal byte array is null
>     */
>    public RawCollationKey() {
>    /**
>     * RawCollationKey created with a internal byte array of length capacity
>     */
>    public RawCollationKey(int capacity) {
>    /**
>     * RawCollationKey created with a internal byte array bytes
>     */
>    public RawCollationKey(byte[] bytes) {
>    /**
>     * Compares 2 RawCollationKey objects.
>     * @return 0 if the sort order is the same,
>     *                 <0 if this RawCollationKey has a smaller sort 
> order than target,
>     *                 >0 if this RawCollationKey has a bigger sort order 
> than target.
>     */
>    public int compare(RawCollationKey target) {
> }
> 
> New method getRawCollationKey to reside in the class 
> com.ibm.icu.text.RuleBasedCollator
> /**
> * Calculates the sort order of the String source and stores the byte 
> array representation of
> * the key into the user provided argument.
> * If key has a internal byte array of length that's too small for the 
> result,
> * the internal byte array will be grown to the exact required size.
> * @return If key is null, a new instance of RawCollationKey will be 
> created and returned,
> *                otherwise the user provided key will be returned.
> * @see #getCollationKey
> */
> public RawCollationKey getRawCollationKey(String source, RawCollationKey 
> key)
> 
> Example of use:
> 
> RuleBasedCollator collator = (RuleBasedCollator)Collator.getInstance();
> RawCollationKey key = new RawCollationKey(128);
> for (int i = 0; i < str.length; i ++) {
>    collator.getRawCollationKey(str[i], key);
>    // do something with key.bytes
> }
> 
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