--- /dev/null
+/*
+ * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
+ * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
+ * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
+ * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
+ * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
+ * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
+ *
+ * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+ *
+ * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+ * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+ * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+ * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+ * limitations under the License.
+ */
+
+package org.apache.arrow.vector;
+
+/**
+ * Configuration class to determine if null checking should be enabled or disabled for the "get" methods.
+ * For example, the get method of class org.apache.arrow.vector.Float8Vector first checks if the value
+ * at the given index is null, before retrieving the value. This configuration will turn on and off such checks.
+ *
+ * <p>Null checking is on by default. You can disable it by setting either the system property or the
+ * environmental variable to "false". The system property is named "arrow.enable_null_check_for_get" and
+ * the environmental variable is named "ARROW_ENABLE_NULL_CHECK_FOR_GET".
+ * When both the system property and the environmental variable are set, the system property takes precedence.
+ * </p>
+ * <p>
+ * Disabling null-checking in the "get" methods may lead to performance improvements.
+ * For example, suppose we have the following micro-benchmark:
+ * </p>
+ * <p>
+ * <pre>{@code
+ *
+ * Float8Vector vector = ...
+ *
+ * public void test() {
+ * sum = 0;
+ * for (int i = 0; i < 1024; i++) {
+ * vector.set(i, i + 10.0);
+ * safeSum += vector.get(i);
+ * }
+ * }
+ *
+ * }</pre>
+ * </p>
+ * <p>
+ * Performance evaluations of the micro-benchmark with the JMH framework reveal that, disabling null checking
+ * has the following effects:
+ * 1. The amounts of byte code and assembly code generated by JIT are both smaller.
+ * 2. The performance improves by about 30% (2.819 ± 0.005 us/op vs. 4.069 ± 0.004 us/op).
+ * </p>
+ * <p>
+ * Therefore, for scenarios where the user can be sure that the null-checking is unnecessary,
+ * it is beneficial to disable it with this configuration.
+ * </p>
+ */
+public class NullCheckingForGet {
+
+ /**
+ * The flag to indicate if null checking is enabled for "get" methods.
+ */
+ public static final boolean NULL_CHECKING_ENABLED;
+
+ static {
+ String envProperty = System.getenv("ARROW_ENABLE_NULL_CHECK_FOR_GET");
+ String sysProperty = System.getProperty("arrow.enable_null_check_for_get");
+
+ // The system property has a higher priority than the environmental variable.
+ String flagValue = sysProperty;
+ if (flagValue == null) {
+ flagValue = envProperty;
+ }
+
+ // The flag is set to false only if the system property/environmental
+ // variable is explicitly set to "false".
+ NULL_CHECKING_ENABLED = !"false".equals(flagValue);
+ }
+
+ private NullCheckingForGet() {
+ }
+}