dereferencing null

[James Miller]

On 3 March 2012 23:13, bearophile <bearophileHUGS at lycos.com> wrote:
> Walter:
>
>> Adding in software checks for null pointers will dramatically slow things down.
>
> Define this use of "dramatically" in a more quantitative and objective way, please. Is Java "dramatically" slower than C++/D here?
>
> Bye,
> bearophile

Not to be too cheeky here, but since its done in hardware, and
therefore no software checks are done, I'm going to say that it is
infinitely slower. Since even 1 extra instruction is infinitely more
than the current 0.