llSetLinkAlpha vs llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast

[Innula Zenovka]

I want to loop though a list of a couple of dozen prims in a large linkset, changing their alpha value on all sides (and nothing else). 

Is there any advantage to using llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast rather than llSetLinkAlpha in such circumstances?   They're all the same colour, and I know what it is, so I don't have to worry about knowing what colour vector to use if I do use llSetLinkPPFast.

NevertheIess, I can't think of any particular reason to prefer llSetLinkPPFast, but I thought it wisest to check.

[Rolig Loon]

I can't either.  SLPPF is more of a pain to code because you need to deal with the color.  If you don't care about color anyway, I can't see any good reason to use it instead of llSetLinkAlpha.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

I would think that there's a good reason to use llSetLinkAlpha(), since there's much less processing involved - hardly any parameter-checking, no list to work through.  SL is going to get the job done a lot quicker with less to do, even without the artificial delays of some other functions.

[Haravikk Mistral]

Lists are always going to be the weak point of llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast() as they're pretty unwieldy, even small ones, so you can lose a lot of the benefit of having no delay. For this reason dedicated functions are always better unless they have a strangely long delay built-in.

The main advantage of llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast() is not in replacing single function calls, but in performing multiple actions at once, or actions that we don't currently have a corresponding llSetLink*() function for. Same advantage really as llSetLinkPrimitiveParams(), except that you don't have to have helper scripts if you need to perform several separate updates within a short space of time.

[Void Singer]

in your case use, as people are pointing out... linkAlpha is prefered, and as Haravik was leading towards, even if you have multiple things you need to set, if you don't need all the components of something like PRIM_COLOR, or indeed need to avoid a component, then using using both functions is still going to be faster, than coding around the the unneeded attribute, smaller and easier to read too, in most instances.