Instance Flyweight Pattern
The InstanceFlyweightPattern is an extreme form of the FlyweightPattern.
- Name: InstanceFlyweightPattern
- Classification: I have no clue.
- Motivation:
- Applicability: Replacing value types with immutable reference types while saving memory.
- Structure: ?
- Participants: ?
- Collaborations: ?
- Consequences: Decrease on memory usage; however, some calculations might become harder because of the inability to directly manipulate new instances as an optimization.
- Implementation: Memoize the 'new' method!
- Sample Code:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
package Integer;
{ my %ints;
sub new {
my $class = shift;
my $self;
unless(exists($self = $ints{$_[0]})){
$self = bless {'int' => $_[0]}, $class;
}
$self;
}
}
- Known Uses: Numeric types come to mind.
- Related Patterns: ReverseFlyweightPattern, FlyweightPattern, SingletonPattern