Optimize NodePath

[TokageItLab]

co-authored-by: @Ryan-000

• Split from Optimize animation performance and improve internals #112308

[Ivorforce]

Makes sense to me.

The if condition itself should be almost free¹.
In contrast, many paths will probably pass the absolute check, and start comparing path parts. Each indirection could incur cache misses, which are very expensive in comparison².

The only caveat i have is that I don't know how many NodePath instances have a valid hash cache, so I don't know how often this check will actually help in practice.
But this will be hard to estimate, and like I mentioned, the potential regression vs potential benefit is fairly large, so I think this is fine.

Footnotes

1. See the cost of comparisons and jumps, both of which are just a few cycles https://www.agner.org/optimize/optimizing_cpp.pdf ↩

2. See the cost of cache misses https://www.agner.org/optimize/optimizing_cpp.pdf ↩

[Repiteo]

Thanks!