CacheMatchInterface.java

/**
 * Copyright (c) 2003-2009, Xith3D Project Group all rights reserved.
 * 
 * Portions based on the Java3D interface, Copyright by Sun Microsystems.
 * Many thanks to the developers of Java3D and Sun Microsystems for their
 * innovation and design.
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 * contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this
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package org.xith3d.utility.cache;

/**
 * Used by the caching system to find a matching cached item.
 * 
 * @author David Yazel
 */
public interface CacheMatchInterface< T >
{
    /**
     * @param o The object in the cache
     * @return the match against the specified cache item.
     *   The percent that this is a "good" match. zero indicates it
     *   is not an acceptable match. 1 means it is a perfect match. All other
     *   values between 0 and 1 means it is an acceptable match, but the closer
     *   to 1, the better it is.<br>
     *   <br>
     *   An example would be a system which cached NIO byte buffers. If these
     *   buffers are used briefly and then returned you can save a lot of garbage collection,
     *   especially if these are of substantial size (images). The implementation of the
     *   catch match interface might look for a cached buffer that was big enough, but
     *   which was not overly big.
     */
    float match( T o );
}