Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!van-bc!nuucp
From: lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Compiled BASIC recommendations needed
Message-ID: <2432@van-bc.UUCP>
Date: 20 May 89 16:20:38 GMT
Sender: usenet@van-bc.UUCP
Lines: 97

In <1900@ektools.UUCP>, barrett@ektools.UUCP (Chris Barrett) writes:
> In article <18480@cup.portal.com> Doug_B_Erdely@cup.portal.com writes:
>> Get Hi-Soft Basic! It is like AmigaBasic but compiled. You can load in a Amiga-
> 
> What about sizes of compiled files, How does it compare to the size of the
> source?  Speed of compilation? Speed of execution? How does it compare to 
> AC-Basic compiler?  Inquiring minds want to know!  Thanks for any info.

Compiled files are very reasonable in size. There is an option that allows you
to compile to two types of code, one that uses the supplied
hisoftbasic.library, and one that compiles to standalone executable requiring
no other modules/files to run. The type that needs the library builds the
smallest executable (see below)

Here are some stats for you. The first is a non-trivial program that does a
sort of a pretty-print of a file captured from a Compuserve COnference. It
checks the lengths of the names of the participants and formats lines
accordingly, removing the Compuserve specific room number, parens, job numbers,
or user ID numbers, allows selective inclusion or exclusion of participants by
name, inclusion or exclusion of private messages received, and inclusion or
exclusion of 'status' resukts, showing who is on-line at the time.

I wrote it as an excercise to see how the language was, and it turned out to be
useful (I know of one fellow who saves himself an hour or two every week with
it).

Calculations.bas is the (probably older version) Byte benchmark of the same
name. Code follows:

--------------------------
REM $EVENT ON
REM $OPTION B+,G-,N+,L-,Y+

defint i

nr = 5000
a = 2.71828
b = 3.14159
c = 1
for i = 1 to nr
	c = c*a
	c = c*b
	c = c/a
	c = c/b
next i
print "error ="; c-1
-------------------------

Stats:
------
cofilter.bas      4470 bytes - (about 190 lines of code)
calculations.bas   173 bytes - (see code above)


Compiled to run with hisoftbasic.library
----------------------------------------
cofilter          6148 bytes - Time to compile: 9.32 seconds
calculations       712 bytes - Time to compile: 3.46 seconds
NOTE: hisoftbasic.library -  46672 bytes (required at run time for above)


Compiled standalone
-------------------
calculations     12440 bytes - Time to compile:  4.14 seconds
cofilter         23972 bytes - Time to compile: 10.56 seconds


Runtime speed
-------------
Calculations: 3.58 seconds, error =-1.192093E-07
Cofilter:     N/A

NOTE: May '85 True Basic review gave the following times and results
      (on IBM PC)

True Basic:   19.7 seconds, error = -4.5830006457E-13
PC-Basic:     69.2 seconds, error = -1.788139E-07
BetterBASIC:  91.3 seconds, error =  0  (uses BCD internally)
Turbo Pascal: 82.6 seconds, error = -1.3384124031E-08

------------------------------

I have not used AC-Basic, since I was completely turned off by the minimum
standalone code size, which includes the entire run-time library, whether you
need it or not.

I think this is a great package, even if I don't like Basic much.

-larry

--
  - Don't tell me what kind of a day to have! -
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+ 
|   //   Larry Phillips                                                |
| \X/    lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca or uunet!van-bc!lpami!lphillips  |
|        COMPUSERVE: 76703,4322                                        |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+