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From: hannon@clio.las.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Compiler efficiency
Message-ID: <17000058@clio>
Date: Tue, 3-Nov-87 12:47:00 EST
Article-I.D.: clio.17000058
Posted: Tue Nov  3 12:47:00 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Nov-87 01:46:37 EST
References: <3987@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Lines: 36
Nf-ID: #R:watdragon.waterloo.edu:3987:clio:17000058:000:2258
Nf-From: clio.las.uiuc.edu!hannon    Nov  3 11:47:00 1987


palarson@watdragon.waterloo.edu(Johan Larson) writes in comp.sys.mac

>I have heard some murmurs (they weren't loud enough to be be termed
>complaints) that some (many?  all?) compilers for the mac produce code of 
>questionable efficiency.  I don't know enough assembly to prove or disprove
>this statement.  Is there any merit to these murmurs?
>
	After disassembling some Lightspeed Pascal generated code I can
say without a shadow of a doubt that it is some of the WORST code (if not
the worst) I have ever seen.  Now, I have to admit, that one of the reasons
for this is that LSP is a ONE PASS COMPILER which accounts for its speed, but
that should not effect the code as much as it does...  It is not uncommon to
find a sequence of NOP's in  the code, let alone places where three
instructions are used instead of one.
	I've even had one instance where the code generation was soo poor
that it caused my INIT to crash because it somehow modified the PC!!!
	I do recommend LSP for debugging code, but I refuse to compile 
something that will be published/distributed under LSP (I use MPW becuase it's
code generation is EXCELLENT and it is very code compatable with LSP).


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