[Solved] Packed vs. Unpacked Strings

iceeedr · **Author**

Hello, there has been some change from 2009 to here on the subject "Packed vs. Unpacked Strings", I read the tutorial and found it interesting, but I believe I have never seen anyone using ... is there still the limitation regarding MOTD and native amx? Did you have an update? And the main question why no one uses? Thank you.

Here the link

https://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=90735

klippy · *Last edited by klippy; 05-15-2019 at 07:11.*

Because all natives/functions that accept strings would have to be re-coded to support packed strings, and there's really no reason for it. Nobody uses it now because it's just pain in the ass to use it. Yes, it's more memory efficient, but it really doesn't matter.

**Bugsy** · *Last edited by Bugsy; 05-17-2019 at 22:13.*

Pretty much on the same page with Klippy. Since the AMX-X natives do not support them, all of the effort you would need to do to pack it, unpack it to send it to a native, and then re-pack it, you are wasting CPU resources just to reduce your array size to hold a string, not worth it. When and if the natives can use them, then definitely will be worthwhile. I believe SourceMod uses them, but not sure.

When I wrote that thread, I wasn't taking this into consideration, just focused on the memory savings.