java.lang.reflect.Array.get/set performance

[Ismael Juma]

Hey all,

The approach used for Arrays in Scala was changed in 2.8 and initially 
java.lang.reflect.Array.get/set was used in certain cases. That was changed at 
the end of last year[1] after it was pointed out that the performance of those 
methods was less than desirable[2].

The interesting conclusion from that thread was that a simple instanceof check 
for each array type is faster than using java.lang.reflect.Array.get/set. Given 
those results, is there a good reason for not replacing the existing native 
methods with pure Java methods that simply use instanceof for each array type?

Best,
Ismael

[1] https://lampsvn.epfl.ch/trac/scala/changeset/20267
[2] http://www.scala-lang.org/node/4602