Speeding up method searches

[Per Bothner]

Bryce McKinlay <bryce@albatross.co.nz> writes:

> I would say that Interning should be as fast as possible if we are going
> to be calling it on every method name and signature of every initialized
> class.

Since this only happens when a class is initialized, speed is
important but perhaps not that critical.  I'm even more concerned
about space.  Using a general Hashtable is wsteful in terms of space:
Each entry in the hashtable has both a key and a value.  In the intern
table, the key and the value are the same.  Thus using a Hashtable
would waste *at least* one pointer field for each interned String.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/~per/