I have one question also. Can you comment upon the usage of “trace” statements in terms of memory used. Does using too many trace statements inside multi-player games swf can cause any adverse affect?

Thanks,
Rohit

Few people really know how to do high quality benchmarks. I tested your findings and many more optimizations myself, I hope that you and your readers find it helpful http://www.stephencalenderblog.com/?p=7

Thanks,

Stephen

For anyone interested, I squeezed a couple more ms out of the 2D loop by replacing the boolean with an increment/decrement variable and using strict equals. It’s about 30ms faster on a 2000×2000 image.

while(true){
color = bitmapData.getPixel(x, y);
x += i;
if(x === width){
if(++y === height) break;
i = -1;
} else if (x === 0){
if(++y === height) break;
i = 1;
}
}

but i agree that try catch should not be used for situations where a check against null could also be set. i think in this cases a test against null is clearer then try/catch.

here are my test result:
// s != null so try block is executed; n= 1000000:
// with try catch: 305
// test with null: 292

// s == null so catch block is executed; n= 100000:
// with try catch: 1623
// test with null: 10