ROOT collections

Pasha Murat (murat@cdfsga.fnal.gov)
Mon, 6 Oct 1997 20:59:02 GMT


I have a couple of questions about ROOT arrays - after
looking over the documentation for quite a while I felt like
I still don't have all the answers.

- how does the TObjArray know the number of elements in it? It is smart:
it doesn't do compression when one of its objects is deleted therefore
it allows "holes" in its structure.
Does it mean that to get the number of objects in TObjArray one has to
calculate this number explicitly by iterating over the collection each time
he needs it?

- Is it possible to put an existing object into ROOT collection without
creating its clone on heap?
What happens if a locally defined object has been added to a collection?
Is it always necessary to use new?
If the answer to the previous quiestion is "yes", it means that collection
doesnt' own its objects in a sense that they've been created outside the
collection. So what happens then with the objects when collection gets
deleted? Who keeps the responsibility for deleting the objects?


Thanks a lot, Pasha.