Questions about arrays

[uprize]

OK here is what I am trying to do.

Im creating an engine atm and working on grid pathfinding which is going quite well. For saving my paths etc, Im using an array which saves the path for each active that will be moving.
All my actives are given an ID. The ID is always set to 0, unless the objects are to move (which I will spread value 1)
That way my movement fastloop will only be triggered a few times rather than for all actives.

When I find a path between each active and the destination, the path is saved in my array. I can determine which path is associated to which active by using the ID of the active as the Y index of the array. (this part is all sorted).

Now this is where it gets tricky.
What I want to happen is when one of my actives reaches its destination, it's ID will be reset to 0 and its path is deleted from the array. Then the spread value will kick in again, and obviously some of the actives will be given a different ID so the path associated with that active will now need to be moved to their current ID in the array.

The idea is that the array will only keep the paths of moving objects and delete that path from memory once the destination is reached.

So my questions:

1. Out of all the array objects, which one is FASTEST at loading/saving data to it. Speed is essential as there may be a lot of data being written to the array at any given time.

2. Which of the array objects will allow me to delete a row in the middle of it, and shift all remaining rows below it up a position so I don't leave gaps?

Hope this all makes sense.

Thanks in advance

[Joshtek]

1. I don't know. Speed comparison for accessing data (time taken for 40k operations in hundredths of seconds - lower is better):
Active Object's Alterable String = 15
String Object = 16
Data Store 2 = 19
MagicDeque = 22
Global String = 28
Dynamic Array = 31
GlobalStoreX = 33
Array = 39
AssArray = 44
NamedVar = 50
String Parser 2 = 59
Static Text = 356
List = 506
ListView = 1106
Combo Box = 1197
INI = 3892

2. MagicDeque, I believe.

[uprize]

Thanks for the reply.

Looks like magic deque is the way for me to go, although it looks quite complicated.

Has anyone had much experience using it or got any tutorial/examples on deleting and inserting rows, saving/loading etc?

[Dynasoft]

If you use one of the "keyed" data store objects, eg assarray, then you can store the path using the object's fixed value instead of a spread value.

It could take a bit more work that way though.

[uprize]

dynasoft: sounds interesting, how would i do that? so each fixed value could be an 'index' in the array?? And i can simply delete it once the object is destroyed??

Im basically after whatever will be the fastest and efficient way whatever it is

[Dynasoft]

Yeah, something like that. Though I believe you need to store more than one value or string per object, so it might not be that easy.

[uprize]

so does anyone have any examples or tutorials on any of the array objects?? I can't figure out magic deque or associative array.

[uprize]

anyone??

[Gustav]

Learning by doing is the best way.

[uprize]

it certainly is but examples are so much easier.