> What's the use case for it outside of, say, binary executable loaders? If you're doing low-level optimizations, and you know that your pointed-to objects are

> What's the use case for it outside of, say, binary executable loaders? If you're doing low-level optimizations, and you know that your pointed-to objects are, say, 8-byte-aligned, then you can use the lower 3 bits of your pointer for storing metadata. In certain cases, that can be immensely useful. Some GC implementations use this trick, for example.