Local Atom Tables

An application can use a local atom table to efficiently manage a large number of strings used only within the application. These strings, and the associated atoms, are available only to the application that created the table.

An application requiring the same string in a number of structures can reduce memory usage by using a local atom table. Rather than copying the string into each structure, the application can place the string in the atom table and include the resulting atom in the structures. In this way, a string appears only once in memory but can be used many times in the application.

Applications can also use local atom tables to save time when searching for a particular string. To perform a search, an application need only place the search string in the atom table and compare the resulting atom with the atoms in the relevant structures. Comparing atoms is typically faster than comparing strings.

Atom tables are implemented as hash tables. By default, a local atom table uses 37 buckets for its hash table. However, you can change the number of buckets used by calling the InitAtomTable function. If the application calls InitAtomTable, however, it must do so before calling any other atom-management functions.