Handy Abbreviations

I've noticed how my friends and I have a bunch of pithy abbreviation functions that we end up copying from project to project, so I started a public-domain repo where we can collect them all in one place to be more helpful to everyone: https://github.com/maxattack/Unity-Abbrev

 

Code (CSharp):

1. public static Vector2 yx(this Vector2 v) { return new Vector2(v.y, v.x); }

This is the C# way of doing C++ macros? It doesn't generate any extra method calls?

 

This is called extension method. C# doesn't HAVE macros, so it probably generates function call. But then again, you can never be sure about anything with compiled language. This thing could - in theory - end up being inlined.

By the way.
Unity api has Vector3.forward, Vector3.up and such.
It might make sense to use those instead of calling "new Vector3" every time.
Stuff like "new Vector3(0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f)" goes against usual recommendation to avoid using magic numbers.

 

Sure, but it doesn't have Vector3.backward, Vector3.left, Vector3.down, etc -- since I named all six variations it made the impl more consistent to just use literal constructors across them all.

 

Yes it does. And even if it didn't, you would just do -Vector3.forward for Vector3.back.

--Eric

 

http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Vector3-back.html
http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Vector3-left.html
http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Vector3-down.html

Either way, I meant to say that you can redirect to Vector3 forward/right/up and use those instead of calling new Vector3 every time.

 

We can see in MonoDevelop's assembly browser that those getters just call the same constructor literal. "Six eggs or a half dozen."

 

But thanks for the tip about .back, etc I guess I assumed it wasn't there because UnityEngine.Transform doesn't have names for the negative unit axes.

 

This. It's honestly personal preference for 90% of cases but returning a new Vector3 makes for 1 less instance of copying around a struct. For a library targeted for use by multiple people, why not go the extra meter with optimization?