# Objective
- To fix a tiny bug in `bevy_ecs::storage::Tables` that, in one case,
means it accidentally allocates an additional "empty" `Table`, resulting
in two "empty" `Table`s:
- The one pre-allocated empty table at index 0 whose index is designed
to match up with `TableId::empty()`
- One extra empty table, at some non-0 index, that does not match up
with `TableId::empty()`.
- This PR aims to prevent this extraneous `Table`, ensuring that
entities with no components in table-storage reliably have their
archetype's table ID be equal to `TableId::empty()`.
## Solution
### Background
The issue occurs because:
- `Tables` contains:
- `tables: Vec<Table>` - The set of all `Table`s allocated in the world.
- `table_ids: HashMap<Box<[ComponentId]>, TableId>` - An index to
rapidly lookup the `Table` in `tables` by a set of `ComponentId`s.
- When `Tables` is constructed it pre-populates the `tables` `Vec` with
an empty `Table`.
- This ensures that the first entry (index 0) is always the `Table` for
entities with no components in table storage.
- In particular, `TableId::empty()` is a utility that returns a
`TableId` of `0`.
- However, the `table_ids` map is not initialised to associate an empty
`[ComponentId]` with `TableId` `0`.
- This means, the first time a structural change tries to access a
`Table` for an archetype with 0 table components:
- `Tables::get_id_or_insert` is used to retrieve the target `Table`
- The function attempts to lookup the entry in the `table_ids` `HashMap`
whose key is the empty `ComponentId` set
- The empty `Table` created at startup won't be found, because it was
never inserted into `table_ids`
- It will instead create a new table, insert it into the `HashMap`
(preventing further instances of this issue), and return it.
### Changes
- I considered simply initialising the `table_ids` `HashMap` to know
about the pre-allocated `Table`
- However, I ended up using the proposed solution discussed on Discord
[#ecs-dev](https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/749335865876021248/1320430933152759958):
- Make `Tables::get_id_or_insert` simply early-exit if the requested
`component_ids` was empty.
- This avoids unnecessarily hashing the empty slice and looking it up in
the `HashMap`.
- The `table_ids` `HashMap` is not exposed outside this struct, and is
only used within `get_id_or_insert`, so it seems wasteful to defensively
populate it with the empty `Table`.
## Testing
This is my first Bevy contribution, so I don't really know the processes
that well. That said:
- I have introduced a little test that exercises the original issue and
shows that it is now resolved.
- I have run the `bevy_ecs` tests locally, so I have reasonable
confidence I haven't broken that.
- I haven't run any further test suites, mostly as when I tried to run
test suites for the whole project it filled my entire SSD with >600GB of
target directory output 😱😱😱
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