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Comment by jstimpfle | Hacker News Reader

There isn't any pointer to optimize out really, I don't think - at the machine level, a pointer is a pointer is an integer number regardless of its type at the source code level.

What can be measureable though is function call overhead - if you write a sort function that takes a function pointer and your sort function calls that, there is a lot of work for saving the local state, preparing all the arguments for the function, etc. That work can potentially be avoided if the compiler can inline the function call into (a copy of) your sort function.

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In the case of qsort, void* isn't a problem, since sort() would always take a pointer, but there absolutely is a difference at the machine level between void* and int - one is a value, the other is the address of a value. One is used for calculations, the other is used for calculations OR loading data from memory.

At the machine level there is absolutely a difference. one means your data is right here, the other means the data is elsewhere. That poor data locality can cause cache misses and always consumes extra cycles.

What is "right there"? If the computer should sort an array that is located in main memory, it needs to know their addresses (pointers) to even load them. There is no way around.

It depends on how many times removed it is.

Lets say it's 4 8bit ints. It can be sequentially and directly in memory like:

  stack: [0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x03]

Each int is directly next to each other in memory. But it could instead be pointers to the ints, like:

  stack: [0x07002412, 0x0700241A, 0x07002424, 0x070036A0]

  heap (or stack, really):
  0x07002412: 0x01
  0x0700241A: 0x02
  0x07002424: 0x03
  0x070036A0: 0x04

The CPU needs to dereference that pointer, and the cache is getting all screwed up.

That is what "void*" is doing. You're using a pointer instead of a value.

In C# this is what generics allow you to avoid.

  // This is like my first memory layout above.
  struct Foo<T> { public T MyField; }

vs:

  // This is like the second layout above.
  struct Foo { public object MyField; }

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