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From: darryl@ism780c.UUCP (Darryl Richman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2
Subject: Re: Tyro questions
Message-ID: <4808@ism780c.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 7-Dec-86 11:40:04 EST
Article-I.D.: ism780c.4808
Posted: Sun Dec  7 11:40:04 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 8-Dec-86 05:06:27 EST
References: <4740@ism780c.UUCP> <29@oresoft.UUCP>
Reply-To: darryl@ism780c.UUCP (Darryl Richman)
Distribution: net
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica, CA
Lines: 31


I just wanted to thank the net community for answering my questions--I have
gotten numerous replies.  I have since purchased another book which includes
Wirth's "Revisions and Ammendments to Modula-2" paper.  I still can't locate
PIM-2 edition 3 locally, though.

Has anyone else noticed that Wirth's module concept leads to innefficient
systems?  As a side note, the compiler I use is from his group at ETH.  My
machine doesn't support floating point in hardware, so the module SYSTEM
includes routines for all the needed floating point code.  This means that all
programs that I build have a complete floating point interpretter in them,
even though I rarely (not so far) use it.  The linker doesn't know whether
some procedures within a given module are used or not, so all of them are
brought into the image.  Can the linker know what is needed and what is not?

Of course the answer is to break this into several modules (if only I
could).  But my Mac has a builtin ROM with 700 potentially useful routines.
Does the "glue" code to get to each one go into a separate module?  This
question is a bit hypothetical since the glue code is almost always very
short or nonexistant, but why should a language, one of whose stated goals
is to support low level work, produce bigger than necessary images?

Please do not misunderstand my questions.  I am attracted to the language
because, after 4+ years of "language laywering" C, I find it a welcome
relief that the syntax description fits neatly on 2 pages.

	    --Darryl Richman, INTERACTIVE Systems Corp.
	    ...!cca!ima\
			>-!ism780c!darryl
	    ...!sdcrdcf/
	    The views expressed above are my opinions only.