In message <20000910012804T.yashi / yashi.com> yashi / yashi.com writes: > quick test on my system showed me that using bitoperation is 2 times > slower than instance variables reference for three flags. maybe it's > just my stupid code, but don't know how to speed things up. Using bit operations on Integers needs extra computations and unnessesary object creations if you could access the bits directly. Firstly you need bitmasks for referencing bits, and bitwise operation itself creates its result as new object. These temporaly objects may cause a significant performance problem since they are able to a reason of extra GC. # integer&(1<<bits) vs. bitvector[bits]. Probably you should write a extension library which permit we refernce a bit in a Integer without extra objects. That is good if references with a name is available, but difficult to define a useful interface.... -- kjana / os.xaxon.ne.jp September 10, 2000 Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.