custom tag life cycle question - are custom tags expensive?

[Dave Harms <jd...@clarionmag.com>]

I notice that section 5.4.7 of the JSP 1.1 spec states that "at 
execution time the implementation of a JSP will use an available Tag 
instance with the appropriate prefix and name that is not being used, 
initialize it, and then follow the protocol described below. 
Afterwards, it will release the instance and make it available for 
further use."

When I look at my generated JSP code I see new instances of my custom 
tags created on each call to _jspService. This seems to be in 
contravention of the spec which implies a tag instance pool. It would 
also suggest that some care needs to be taken to make custom tags as 
lightweight as possible in the current implementation. 

Thoughts?

Dave

Dave Harms
jdev@clarionmag.com