Symbol

Remarks

A hash of the name rather than an index into a table, and the reason is determinism. An index assigned in first-seen order depends on what a process happened to load first, so two machines running the same build would assign different numbers to the same word — and a selection that breaks a tie on a number would then pick differently on each of them. [16](../../../docs/plan/16-networking.md) makes that a desync rather than a curiosity. A hash is the same everywhere, for ever, with no table to ship and no order to agree on.

⚠ 32 bits collide, and the bake is where that is caught. Two words in one vocabulary hashing alike would silently make them the same word. Whatever composes a vocabulary checks the whole of it for that and refuses — MoveSet.Compose for a movement vocabulary, BlackboardLayoutBuilder.Build for a blackboard's keys — which turns a one-in-fifty-thousand mystery into a build error naming both words. The alternative — 64 bits — doubles the size of every facet, key and world state to avoid a case the build can simply detect.

Names are kept for diagnostics only. ToString resolves through a process-wide table filled as symbols are created, so a debugger and an error message can say gait rather than 0x4f9a2b1c. Nothing in a frame reads it, and a symbol that arrived from a deserialised set with no name still compares correctly.

⚠ It lives here rather than beside its first caller. Move sets needed an interned name first, so this type spent its first release in Vixen.Animation.Moves; a blackboard key, a gameplay-relevant tag and a GOAP world key each want exactly the same four bytes, and two interned-name types in one engine is the duplication this repository avoids everywhere else. docs/plan/37 § The rows this touches is where that was decided.

Fields and properties (3)

• public uint Id

  The hash. Zero is the empty symbol and matches nothing.

• public static Symbol None

  The symbol that is not a word. Matches nothing, including itself in a facet.

• public bool IsSome

  Whether this is a real word.

Methods (4)

• public Symbol(uint Id)

  An interned name: four bytes that compare as fast as an integer, because they are one.

• public static Symbol Intern(string? name)

  Interns a name.

• public bool TryGetCollision(out string first, out string second)

  Whether two different words this process has interned share this symbol.

• public override string ToString()

  The name this was interned from, if this process has seen it.

Used by (193, showing 40)

• ConstraintStageBenchmarksVixen.Benchmarks.Animation
• ActiveHandlesVixen.Animation
• AgentActionRegistryVixen.Ai
• AgentActionRegistryTestsVixen.Ai.Tests
• AgentDebugRecordVixen.Ai
• AgentDebugRecorderTestsVixen.Ai.Tests
• AiAgentSnapshotVixen.Ai
• AiBreakpointVixen.Ai
• AiBreakpointTestsVixen.Ai.Tests
• AiBreakpointsVixen.Ai
• AiDebugChannelVixen.Ai
• AiDebugChannelTestsVixen.Ai.Tests
• AiDiagnosisVixen.Ai
• AiDiagnosisExitCriteriaTestsVixen.Ai.Tests
• AiFindingVixen.Ai
• AiSnapshotTestsVixen.Ai.Tests
• AiSnapshotsVixen.Ai
• AiSystemVixen.Ai
• AiSystemTreeTestsVixen.Ai.Tests
• AnimationParametersVixen.Animation
• AttachmentFrameVixen.Animation
• AttachmentSocketVixen.Animation
• AttachmentSocketsVixen.Animation
• AuthorableNodeTestsVixen.Ai.Tests
• AuthoringTestsVixen.Animation.Tests
• BehaviorBuildContextVixen.Ai
• BehaviorNodeVixen.Ai
• BehaviorNodeDefinitionVixen.Ai
• BehaviorTreeVixen.Ai
• BehaviorTreeAssetVixen.Ai
• BehaviorTreeCompilerTestsVixen.Ai.Tests
• BehaviorTreeContentVixen.Ai
• BehaviorTreeContentCompilerVixen.Ai
• BehaviorTreeDecoratorTestsVixen.Ai.Tests
• BehaviorTreeDeterminismTestsVixen.Ai.Tests
• BehaviorTreeDiagnosticVixen.Ai
• BehaviorTreeInstanceVixen.Ai
• BehaviorTreeLibraryVixen.Ai
• BehaviorTreeResolverVixen.Ai
• BehaviorTreeTaskTestsVixen.Ai.Tests