en.md

#cocos2d::Vector< T >

• Since: v3.0 beta
• Language: C++

Defined in header "CCVector.h" located in the path "COCOS2DX_ROOT/cocos/base".

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template<class T>class CC_DLL Vector;

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cocos2d::Vector<T> is a sequence container that encapsulates dynamic size arrays.

The elements are stored contiguously and the storage of the cocos2d::Vector<T> is handled automatically. The internal implementation data structure is actually std::vector which is the standard sequence container of STL.

Before Cocos2d-x v3.0 beta, there was another sequence container named cocos2d::CCArray which will be deprecated in the future.

Because we carefully designed the cocos2d::Vector<T> container as a replacement for cocos2d::CCArray, please use cocos2d::Vector<T> instead of cocos2d::CCArray.

The complexity (efficiency) of common operations on cocos2d::Vector<T> is as follows:

• Random access - constant O(1)

• Insertion or removal of elements at the end - amortized constant O(1)

• Insertion or removal of elements - linear in distance to the end of the cocos2d::Vector<T> O(n)

##Template parameters

T - The type of the elements.

• T must be the a pointer to a cocos2d::Object descendant object type. No other data type or primitives are allowed, because we have integrated the memory management model of Cocos2d-x into cocos2d::Vector<T>. （since v3.0 beta）

##Memory Management The cocos2d::Vector<T> class contains only one data member:

std::vector<T> _data;

The memory management of _data is handled automatically by the compiler. If you declare a cocos2d::Vector<T> object on stack, you don't need to worry about the memory deallocation.

If you call new operator to allocate a cocos2d::Vector<T> on the heap, you need to call delete operator to deallocate the memory after usage. The same goes for new[] and delete[].

Note: In modern C++, it preferable to use local storage objects over heap storage objects. So please don't call new operator to allocate a heap object of cocos2d::Vector<T>, use a stack object instead.

If you do want to dynamic allocate cocos2d::Vector<T> on the heap due to some obligatory reasons, please wrap the raw pointer with smart pointers like shared_ptr, unique_ptr.

WARNING: cocos2d::Vector<T> is not itself a descendant of cocos2d::Object, and thus doesn't use retain/release and refcount memory management, like other Cocos2d-x classes! In other words, you cannot call retain, release, etc on the cocos2d::Vector<T> itself.

##Basic Usage We wrapped almost all common operations of std::vector<T> with a unified interface plus the memory management rules of Cocos2d-x.

So the pushBack() method now will retain the ownership of the function argument and the popBack() method will release the ownership of the last element of container.

When you use these operations, you should pay extra attention to the underlying memory management stuff which are the common traps for many newbie Cocos2d-x developers.

WARNING: The cocos2d::Vector<T> doesn't overload operator[], so you can't get a element from cocos2d::Vector<T> using subscript operator like vec[i].

The cocos2d::Vector<T> container provides many different kinds of iterators. Thus we benefit from the standard infrastructure of the C++ standard library; for example, the exclusive huge amount of standard generic algorithms and the for_each loop.

Besides std::vector<T>'s container operations, we have also added many standard algorithms like std::find, std::reverse and std::swap to the cocos2d::Vector<T> container, which simplifies many useful common operations.

For more API usage, please refer to the source code and the tests distributed with the Cocos2d-x 3.0 beta archive.

Here is a simple usage example:

//create Vector<Sprite*> with default size and add a sprite into it
auto sp0 = Sprite::create();
sp0->setTag(0);
//here we use shared_ptr just as a demo. in your code, please use stack object instead
std::shared_ptr<Vector<Sprite*>>  vec0 = std::make_shared<Vector<Sprite*>>();  //default constructor
vec0->pushBack(sp0);

//create a Vector<Object*> with a capacity of 5 and add a sprite into it
auto sp1 = Sprite::create();
sp1->setTag(1);

//initialize a vector with a capacity
Vector<Sprite*>  vec1(5);
//insert a certain object at a certain index
vec1.insert(0, sp1);

//we can also add a whole vector
vec1.pushBack(*vec0);

for(auto sp : vec1)
{
    log("sprite tag = %d", sp->getTag());
}

Vector<Sprite*> vec2(*vec0);
if (vec0->equals(vec2)) { //returns true if the two vectors are equal
    log("pVec0 is equal to pVec2");
}
if (!vec1.empty()) {  //whether the Vector is empty
    //get the capacity and size of the Vector, noted that the capacity is not necessarily equal to the vector size.
    if (vec1.capacity() == vec1.size()) {
        log("pVec1->capacity()==pVec1->size()");
    }else{
        vec1.shrinkToFit();   //shrinks the vector so the memory footprint corresponds with the number of items
        log("pVec1->capacity()==%zd; pVec1->size()==%zd",vec1.capacity(),vec1.size());
    }
    //pVec1->swap(0, 1);  //swap two elements in Vector by their index
    vec1.swap(vec1.front(), vec1.back());  //swap two elements in Vector by their value
    if (vec2.contains(sp0)) {  //returns a Boolean value that indicates whether object is present in vector
        log("The index of sp0 in pVec2 is %zd",vec2.getIndex(sp0));
    }
    //remove the element from the Vector
    vec1.erase(vec1.find(sp0));
    //pVec1->erase(1);
    //pVec1->eraseObject(sp0,true);
    //pVec1->popBack();
    
    vec1.clear(); //remove all elements
    log("The size of pVec1 is %zd",vec1.size());
}

output:

Cocos2d: sprite tag = 1
Cocos2d: sprite tag = 0
Cocos2d: pVec0 is equal to pVec2
Cocos2d: pVec1->capacity()==2; pVec1->size()==2
Cocos2d: The index of sp0 in pVec2 is 0
Cocos2d: The size of pVec1 is 0

##Best practice

• Prefer stack-based scope cocos2d::Vector<T> over heap-based scope cocos2d::Vector<T>
• When passing cocos2d::Vector<T> as an argument, declare it as a const reference, like const cocos2d::Vector<T>&
• When returning a cocos2d::Vector<T> from a function, simply return the value object. The compiler will optimize this situation by using move semantics.
• Don't try to hold any data type objects in a cocos2d::Vector<T> except for cocos2d::Object descendant object pointers.