**FIRST EMAIL**/Java and Orbit Balls *****JAVA DISCUSSION***

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by The Lucas

[SIDE RANT] I think you are missing the point (sorry for the pun). The point of pointer arithmetic is to compute the address of an element (the array data structure is optional). If you can get that address by simply adding to a pointer (stored in a register) that is more efficient than computing that address by loading a symbol and adding the result of a multiplication (indexing an array using a variable).[/SIDE RANT]

The efficiency is not what you suggest it is. Pointer arithmetic adds the result of a multiplication too: addition and subtraction are scaled by the size of the structure pointed to.