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From: ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo L. Schwab)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Look what I found!
Message-ID: <759@well.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Mar-86 02:12:19 EST
Article-I.D.: well.759
Posted: Wed Mar 12 02:12:19 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Mar-86 05:39:58 EST
Reply-To: ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo L. Schwab)
Distribution: net
Organization: Whole Earth Lectronic Link, Sausalito CA
Lines: 53

[ Deletion of this line by whatever means violates US Copyright laws :-]

	Guess what I stumbled onto!

	I was compiling my project, and had gotten to the linking stage,
and had accidentally mistyped one of the parameters to Deep Thought (read
Alink).  Naturally, it screamed at me for being a twat, and showed me a
correct argument list.  Even though I knew what I did wrong, I looked
at the diagnostic anyway, and noticed an argument I'd never seen before.

	It was called "faster".

	"Nah," I said to myself.  "Can't be."  So I tried it, just to
prove it to myself.  I typed out the command, giving "faster" as the last
argument (something like "alink with link to ram:i faster").

	Off it went, grinding away.  Soon it reached the point where it
lapses into catatonia.  Except it didn't!  It kept on grinding away, and
soon thereafter, I got the "Linking complete - maximum code size" message.
Deep Thought also usually thinks a bit more after that, but it didn't.
It gave me a prompt back right away.

	"There's gotta be a catch," I thought.  So I hacked up the WITH
file to not include a code module, and ran it again, thinking that it was
skimping on external reference checking.  It wasn't.  It reported the
unresolved external references like it should..  And it didn't think about
it.

	"Hmmm.  Maybe it doesn't clean up after itself?" I thought.  So
I ran 'avail' around it.  It was reclaiming all its memory.

	"I know, the final output file is bigger," I said, so I ran Deep
Thought once with the "faster" argument, and once without, and compared
file sizes.  They were identical.

	"Good Grief!" I said.  "It really works!"  I now use the "faster"
argument all the time.  The thing I want to know is, why weren't we told
about this new feature in the 1.1 release packet?  And why isn't the
"faster" feature on by default?  Is there a bug in it I haven't stumbled
across yet?  If there is, is it a really insidious one?  Both "faster" and
"slower" versions of the linked program worked fine.  What's the deal?

	Note: this pertains to Alink version 3.20.
	Another note: "faster" must be supplied in the command line; it
can't be in a WITH file, or Alink will complain.

	Anyway, I thought you might be interested in this one.....

					Leo L. Schwab
					dual!unicom!schwab
					well!ewhac

"I really got to think of a witty signature file...."