Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bu-cs!madd
From: madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Need to optimize 8086 C code for size
Message-ID: <19877@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 12 Feb 88 15:25:35 GMT
References: <3680@ihlpf.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: madd@bu-it.bu.edu (Jim Frost)
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Organization: Boston University Distributed Systems Group
Lines: 26

In article <3680@ihlpf.ATT.COM> nevin1@ihlpf.UUCP (00704a-Liber,N.J.) writes:
>I have a friend who is doing some development work for the 8086 PC market.
>He needs to optimize for size, since the 640K limit is posing some almost
>insurmountable problems.
>
>He is using Microsoft C 4.0 currently [...] when he turns the
>optimizer on it produces incorrect (albiet shorter) code.  If he turns the
>optimizer off the executable becomes too big.  [...]
>He is going to try Turbo C 1.5 to see if there are any
>improvements. [...]

I'd say Turbo C is your best bet.  Even in its "optimize for speed"
mode it compiles significantly smaller than uSoft C, and in its
"optimize for size" mode it makes some really small code.  TC doesn't
make the fastest code, but it's pretty fast and REAL small.

And it seems that we have another person who's been bitten by the
uSoft optimization bugaboos.  Are you listening, Microsoft?  Or are
your ads just so much fluff?

BTW, what do you think uSoft is going to do with their ads now that
TC has graphics?  And I hear that there's soon to be a Borland
debugger.  Looks like the competition is heating up!

jim frost
madd@bu-it.bu.edu