[pshirshov]

In our usecase, for which we created the library, we made this tradeoff to save several bytes per pointer and keep binary form more compact. The application splits large objects into smaller chunks. 99% of the structures there are relatively small but there are tons of them. Most likely you can do the same - just split large structures into smaller ones.

If you need support for larger structures, you may create your own implementation or extend ours (and I would really like to hear about your usecase).

SICK as a concept is simple. SICK as the library was created to cover some particular usecases and may be not suitable for everyone. We would welcome any contributions.

[duped]

If you use varints for pointers you can have the best of both worlds, and achieve even better compaction for the smallest objects.

[pshirshov]

Yep, can be done but they aren't free because of variable size. With constant pointers I can access const-sized elements directly, with varints I would have to do some rituals.

I have another binary encoding for different purposes (https://github.com/7mind/baboon) which relies on varints, in case of SICK I decided to go with pointers of constant size to save some pennies on access efficiency.