Using Indices Instead of Pointers for Memory-Efficient Data Structures in Programming
By
vitalnodo
A baker's-dozen of insight crammed into one ring.
Summary
The article discusses a programming technique learned from Zig language creator Andrew Kelley, which involves using indices instead of pointers in data structures. This approach reduces memory usage, minimizes allocations, speeds up access, enables instant freeing, and generally improves performance. The technique is used in Zig's compiler for memory-efficient ASTs and represents a data-oriented design pattern that the author hasn't seen in other languages.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledThe trick is to use indices, not pointers.
It's an extremely simple trick which - when applied to a data structure - reduces memory usage, reduces memory allocations, speeds up accesses, makes freeing instantaneous, and generally makes everything much, much faster.
It's used in Zig's compiler to make very memory-efficient ASTs, and can be applied to many data structures.
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