CGAL users discussion list

[Marc Glisse <>]

On Fri, 2 Mar 2012, Zohar wrote:

> 1. Why is the Simple_Cartesian better than the Cartesian?
>
> I found in the doc of simple_cart:
>
> "In contrast to Cartesian, no reference counting is used internally. This
> eases debugging, but may slow down algorithms that copy objects
> intensively."

It is not better in general. When the number type is double, the heavy 
reference counting machinery has only drawbacks (copying a pair of double 
takes no time): dynamic allocation, thread-unsafe. When the number type is 
something heavy (say mpq_class or some other bignum that is not already 
reference-counted) and you do a lot a copying objects around, it can be a 
life-saver.

--
Marc Glisse