# Use of \`pointer\`

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/use-of-pointer/8849>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [February 2, 2018, 1:58pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/use-of-pointer/8849 "2018-02-02T13:58:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 9

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jameson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jameson/32/23_2.png) [@jameson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jameson)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2018, 5:22pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/use-of-pointer/8849/9 "2018-02-05T17:22:24Z")

</div>

> [@A plea for int overflow checking as the default](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/a-plea-for-int-overflow-checking-as-the-default/3338/71):
>
> I also use pointer extensively, to get C performance from Julia.

Currently we pessimize (slow down) array-loads in some cases because of the possibility that they may have been used with the (now mostly deprecated implementation of) reinterpret calls. We always pessimize the performance of `pointer` calls and any code around them. In this, we are quite similar to C. In the future, we would like to be faster than C, like Fortran and Rust, by giving the compiler greater freedom to elide memory access and/or to use more SIMD instructions.

---

_[View the full topic](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/use-of-pointer/8849)._