Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!clyde.concordia.ca!nstn.ns.ca!news.cs.indiana.edu!samsung!think.com!mintaka!geech.ai.mit.edu!rjc
From: rjc@geech.ai.mit.edu (Ray Cromwell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: How are some programs SO DAMN SMALL!
Message-ID: <1991Feb14.234240.7920@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 14 Feb 91 23:42:40 GMT
References: <91042.134209J56QC@CUNYVM.BITNET> <MWM.91Feb14030520@raven.pa.dec.com> <16689@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Sender: daemon@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu (Lucifer Maleficius)
Organization: None
Lines: 37

In article <16689@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> djohnson@beowulf.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson) writes:
>In article <MWM.91Feb14030520@raven.pa.dec.com> mwm@pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) writes:
>>Example: I just spent 30 seconds turning out a "hello world" program
>>in a language chosen to 1) be portable, and 2) generate small
>>executables. The executable is 20 bytes long. How small is your best
>>assembler effort?
>
>Ooooo, you FORTH people can be so smug...
  Forth programs need an interpreter.

  Even using assembly, a 20 byte hello world is impossible. The smallest
program I know of is 'Lab', 'EndIf' etc in C: These programs (ARP) are
nothing more then a NOP and RTS. However when the hunks are added to
the file it becomes 40 bytes long.

  An assembly hello_world would look like
    jsr Output(a6)
    move.l d0,d1
    move.l hello,d2
    moveq.b #13,d3
    jsr Write(a6)
    rts
hello dc.b "hello world",0

  This code + hunks would be larger than 40 bytes atleast.
(note, its possible to make this code smaller, and jump directly into rom.
No sane programmer would do that unless he was brainwashed by the 
writers of the abacus books. I also left out the code to get DosBase into
a6, since I forgot the trick optimization to fetch it from ExecBase.)


>
>(well, how many bytes in BASIC? 16?)
>-- 
>Darin Johnson
>djohnson@ucsd.edu
>  - Political correctness is Turing undecidable.