You're making statements that are unspecific and generalizing ("anything you want to do"), while I've presented an explanation why the "cache-efficient" storage

You're making statements that are unspecific and generalizing ("anything you want to do"), while I've presented an explanation why the "cache-efficient" storage optimization may in fact be a pessimization for common token access patterns, because the cost of additional resource consumption can outweigh any marginal benefits this may have for access times of rarely used data. > The whole discussion was about string containers, how fast lookups are, etc No, it was about token storage. > Your "you're wrong" comment was that the program can end up slower when you collect the strings but don't use them No, it was assuming common access patterns of token data in parsers, which aren't "you don't use them" but "you rarely access them, likely only once when parsing but on rare occasion you have to refer back to specific tokens later".