[Soot-list] Fast Annotation Lookup?

[Marc-Andre Laverdiere-Papineau]

Hello,

I am going to do a lot of work that has to do with Java annotations.
I have code that works right now, but it is based on a lot of string 
comparisons - so that is very slow.

Pseudocode:
for all application classes
   get all annotations on the class
     for all annotations in the list I care about
       if annotation.equals(icareabout) then ...

I thought of using StringNumberer to accelerate things a bit - number 
comparisons are faster. But I see that the implementation use a HashMap. 
The calculation of the hash code for a string is a O(n) operation the 
first time (See 
http://jeremymanson.blogspot.com.au/2008/12/benign-data-races-in-java.html).

But if the strings are not canonical, then I have to hit that linear 
operation for the first check. The other ones are O(1), so that's a 
small improvement.

So, here is a question: is Soot automatically converting strings to 
their canonical instance (see String.intern()) ? Or is Soot 
de-duplicating the strings (essentially reimplementing what 
String.intern() does) when loading bodies?

Assuming that there is a proven benefit for StringNumberer, would that 
be a good way to use it?
Pseudocode:
precompute the NumberedString  for what I care about
for all application classes
   get all annotations on the class
     compute the NumberedString for the annotation
     for all precomputed ones
       if (a == b) then ...

Another question: what is the benefit in using StringNumberer over a 
plain comparison of hashCodes?

That being said, am I reinventing the wheel?
Has Soot already has a better/faster way to do this? Something along the 
lines of Scene.v().getMethod() and relatives?


Regards,
-- 
Marc-André Laverdière-Papineau
Doctorant - PhD Candidate