Why `entityAttributes` of MooseObject is an Array

[badetitou]

The entityAttributes of MooseObject is an Array but has the same API as a SmallDictionary.

Do we remember why?
Maybe @jecisc knows?

Maybe memory consumption?

I did not tests, but I suspect that using a SmallDictionary would be faster when accessing data (direct access instead of creating a loop)

attributeAt: name ifAbsent: aBlock
	1 to: entityAttributes size do: [ :n | 
		name == (entityAttributes at: n) key ifTrue: [ 
			^ (entityAttributes at: n) value ] ].
	^ aBlock value

[badetitou]

If the problem is memory consumption, I just check that in huge JavaModel, there are a lot of empty entityAttributes
Maybe we can replace them by lazy acceded SmallDictionary

[NicolasAnquetil]

1- what are the current use cases? Why not defining real instance variables?
2- there is also the #cache instance variable which is another dictionary. We could keep both API (for entityAttributes and privateCache) but using only one instance variable ?

[badetitou]

entityAttributes is used in two cases (If I remember well)

• When importing a model (For instance, generated with VerveineJ) and setting an attributes that does not exists in the Pharo model
• When using submetamodels to create relations without modifying the class definition of the remote entity (there is an example in class MooseObject with the method #violations