Referers

This module analyzes how some instances are refered: for a given set of instances, it will check all instances referencing them and do some stats about their type.

Let's have a look a this code: RefererScript.cs in MemoDummy

  private List<object> objectsList;
  private object[] objectsArray;
  private HashSet<object> objectsSet;
  public int NbObjects { get; set; } = 1000;

  public override void Run()
  {
     objectsList = new List<object>();
     objectsArray = new object[NbObjects];
     objectsSet = new HashSet<object>();

     for(int i=0; i < NbObjects; i++)
     {
       var o = new ComplexObject();
       switch (i%3) {
         case 0:
           objectsList.Add(o);
           break;
         case 1:
           objectsArray[i / 3] = o;
           break;
         case 2:
           objectsSet.Add(o);
           break;
        }
     }

This piece of code will create NbObjects (=1000) instances of type ComplexObject, store one third of them in a List, one third in an Array and the rest in a HashSet.

This information is displayed in MemoScope:

Let's have a look at the result:

#	Type Name	# Instances	# References	References %	Field Name
1	MemoDummy.ComplexObject	1,000	0	0.00 %
2	System.Object[]	9	667	66.70 %	[ x ]
3	System.Collections.Generic.List< System.Object>	1	1	11.11 %	_items
4	MemoDummy.RefererScript	1	1	11.11 %	objectsArray
5	System.Collections.Generic.HashSet+Slot< System.Object> [ ]	7	333	33.30 %	[ x ]
6	System.Collections.Generic.HashSet< System.Object>	1	1	14.29 %	m_slots
7	MemoDummy.RefererScript	1	1	100.00 %	objectsSet

• Line #1: there are 1000 instances of type: ComplexObject
• Line #2: there are 9 instances of type Object[] (array of object) referencing 667 instances of the previous line (1000) = 66.7 % of them. The "[ x ]" in the field column means that all ComplexObjects are members of the array but not with teh same index.
• Line #3: There is one instance of type List referencing one of the 9 instances of type Object[]. 1 on 9 = 11.11 %.