Fast C string comparison?

[Marc Lepage <mlepage@...>]

Hi, this seems like it might be a bit of a FAQ or common pattern, for those working in C (e.g. implementing native types).

In C, I can easily get a string and do a few if statements with strcmp to decide how to handle it. If the methods were called infrequently, I might not be concerned.

What I'm wondering is, if there is a way to avoid the strcmp logic by directly comparing some interned strings, or something like that.

Sort of like:

- in C, grab a copy of the few strings I'm interested in, in some sort of reference

- in C, when methods come in, check the string args (on the stack) against the references grabbed

So that the check is more of a pointer compare than a strcmp.

Is there a pointer to sample code (e.g. users wiki) showing how this is commonly done, gotchas, etc.?

Much appreciated,
Marc