Since you use Set<Pixel> you have to create new Pixel instance to check if it exists in set or not.
If set contains N elements after calling B.function method you will create extra N Pixel nodes. If all elements are new, you just add them to set, in other case Garbage Collection needs to sweep them. One of drawbacks is we need to create m (wheren m <= N - number of Pixel-s which already exists in set) and later we need to collect them by GC. How big is m/N ratio depends from your algorithm and what you are actually doing.
Lets calculate how many memory we need to consume for N = 1_000_000 pixels in set. We know that int is a 4 bytes and double is 8 bytes, lets add extra 8 bytes for an object and 8 bytes for a reference. It gives 32 bytes for every instance of Pixel object. We need to create N objects which gives 32MB. Let's assume that our ratio is 50% so, 16MB we allocated just to check it is not needed.
If this is a cost you can not pay you need to develop algorithm which allows you iterate over Set<Pixel> in an order from left-to-right. So, left neighbour of Pixel X is before X.
Assume that left neighbour of Pixel X(x, y) is pixel X'(x - 1, y). Pixel B(0, y) does not have left neighbour. You need to use TreeSet and implement Comparable<Pixel> interface in Pixel class. Simple implementation could look like this:
@Override
public int compareTo(Pixel o) {
return this.y == o.y ? this.x - o.x : this.y - o.y;
}
This allows you to iterate set in order from left to right: (0, 0), (1, 0), ...., (x - 1, y), (x, y), (x + 1, y), ... , (maxX, maxY). So, when you iterate it you can check whether previous element is a left neighbour of current Pixel. Example implementation could look like below:
void addNeighboursIfNeeded() {
Set<Pixel> neighbours = new HashSet<>(pixels.size());
Pixel last = null;
for (Pixel p : pixels) {
if (p.getX() == 0 || p.isLeftNeighbour(last)) {
// a left border pixel
// or last checked element is a left neighbour of current pixel.
last = p;
continue;
}
// last element was not our left-neighbour so we need to call b method
Pixel left = b.getLeft(p);
neighbours.add(left);
last = p;
}
// add all new neigbours
pixels.addAll(neighbours);
}
This should allow you to save this memory which is allocated for duplicated Pixel objects.