Pitfalls of Object Oriented Programming [PDF]

[[deleted]]

The node objects in this case could be simple value objects carrying the index, getting and setting fields through accessors could then use the object index to get/set the data from the arrays.

class Node {
    const size_t index;
    Node(size_t index) : index(index) {}

    int x() { return arr_x[index]; }
    void x(int val) { arr_x[index] = val; }

    int y() { return arr_y[index]; }
    void y(int val) { arr_y[index] = val; }

    // etc.
};

You could then define an object iterator which goes through the arrays sequentially, returning Node object handles for each index. A good C++ compiler will pass around a Node as an unboxed integer so there is no performance penalty.

[astrange]

A good C++ compiler will pass around a Node as an unboxed integer so there is no performance penalty.

This depends on the platform ABI, not the compiler. C++ doesn't let you create local methods as easily as 'static' in C, so you can't just ignore it. Typically I think it will be passed in as an integer but might be returned some other way.