I would like to know what the best way (performance wise) to access a large data structure is. There are about hundred ways to do it but what is the most accessible for the compiler to optimize? One can access a value by foo[someindex].bar[indexlist[i].subelement[j]].baz[0] or create some pointer aliases like sometype_t* tmpfoo = &foo[someindex]; tmpfoo->bar[indexlist[i].subelement[j]].baz[0] or create reference aliases like sometype_t &tmpfoo = foo[someindex]; tmpfoo.bar[indexlist[i].subelement[j]].baz[0] and so forth...