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Indices, not Pointers

(joegm.github.io)
102 points vitalnodo | 1 comments | 02 Sep 25 23:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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zahlman ◴[02 Sep 25 23:26 UTC] No.45110423[source]▶
> There is a pattern I’ve learned while using Zig which I’ve never seen used in any other language.

I've done this in small applications in C (where nodes were already being statically allocated) and/or assembly (hacking on an existing binary).

No idea about the effect on speed in general; I was trying to save a few bytes of storage in a place where that mattered.

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anonymousiam ◴[03 Sep 25 01:50 UTC] No.45111431[source]▶
But in C, there's not really any difference between pointers and indices. You can access array elements using either method, and they're both equally efficient.
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1. LegionMammal978 ◴[03 Sep 25 01:54 UTC] No.45111456[source]▶
Depending on how many elements you have, you can save some space using 32-bit or even 16-bit indices in place of 64-bit pointers. (Just make sure there isn't any route to overflow the index type.)