<p>Sometimes this question gets rephrased as:</p>
<blockquote><i>Why is it okay to index through the first pointer, but
subsequent pointers won't be dereferenced?</i></blockquote>
<p>The answer is simply because memory does not have to be accessed to
perform the computation. The first operand to the GEP instruction must be a
value of a pointer type. The value of the pointer is provided directly to
<p>Sometimes this question gets rephrased as:</p>
<blockquote><i>Why is it okay to index through the first pointer, but
subsequent pointers won't be dereferenced?</i></blockquote>
<p>The answer is simply because memory does not have to be accessed to
perform the computation. The first operand to the GEP instruction must be a
value of a pointer type. The value of the pointer is provided directly to