Pointer(s)^ versus s[1]

Question

In a function that reads data (data meaning exclusively strings) from disk, which should I prefer? Which is better?

A) DiskStream.Read(Pointer(s         


        

Answer 1

I'd always use the second one which maintains type safety. I don't really buy the performance argument since you are about to hit the disk at worst, or file cache, or main memory, all of which are going to make a handful of CPU operations look somewhat trivial. Correctness should be given higher priority than performance.

However, I would add that this is not something that should be bothering you too much since you should write this particular piece of code once and once only. Put it in a helper class and wrap it up well. Feel free to care about optimisation, re-write it as assembler, whatever takes your fancy. But don't repeat yourself.