Memory difference between QMap<MyInst,QColor> and QMap<MyInst,QString)

[mrjj]

@Qt-Enthusiast
yes. on 64 bit, even more.

[kshegunov]

@Qt-Enthusiast
18 bytes for a QColor instance vs about 30 bytes for a QString object with 6 letters (QString will also keep one zero character at the end and will store the length, as addition to the things I've described in my edit). So yes, QColor will take less memory.

But I just can't stress this enough: use what makes sense. Even if QString were more memory efficient, the complications and the needed CPU time for conversions between colors and strings just makes it unsuitable. And small wonder, it's supposed to be a general purpose string, not a color. There's a separate class that represents colors, so you should use that in any case and not worry about how much bytes anything takes unless you hit the memory limit (which seems doubtful at this point).

[jsulm]

@kshegunov Yes, using QString instead of QColor to represent a colour just to save some bytes is an example for how not to optimize software.
@qtEnthusiast why not use an 32bit unsigned int to represent a colour? This way you only need 4 bytes.

[mrjj]

@jsulm
Following your thought of unsigned int

Would
QMap<MyInst,QRgb);

be as good?

It does seems
QColor::QColor(QRgb color)

will ignore alpha.

[jsulm]

@mrjj It depends on the requirements: is alpha needed?

[mrjj]

@jsulm
Hi
Not 100% sure but my guess would be
yes from what he posted so far.

update:
funny enough it seems to like alpha the other way
QRgb QColor::rgba() const

[Qt Enthusiast]

Can u tell me how to represent integer for colors because we can have millions of colors ?

[jsulm]

@Qt-Enthusiast 32bit integer can represent billions of values/colors.
RGB - means 1byte for red, 1byte for green and one byte for blue. Since 32bit integer consists of 4 bytes you still have one byte for alpha channel.

[jsulm]

@Qt-Enthusiast See here: http://doc.qt.io/qt-5.7/qcolor.html#QRgb-typedef

[SGaist]

What exactly do you want to do with that map ?