Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mstan!amull
From: amull@Morgan.COM (Andrew P. Mullhaupt)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Looking for GOOD optimizing compilers for MS-DOS
Summary: I don't think so.
Message-ID: <749@s5.Morgan.COM>
Date: 21 Feb 90 17:01:36 GMT
References: <9311@portia.Stanford.EDU> <1541@maytag.waterloo.edu>
Organization: Morgan Stanley & Co. NY, NY
Lines: 32

In article <1541@maytag.waterloo.edu>, dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu (Duncan Murdoch) writes:
> 
> I don't know what the competition is like, but would suggest that you
> can probably do as well as an optimizing compiler by using a profiler
> (TurboPower sells TP specific ones, or you can use a general purpose
> one), and rewriting the critical sections in assembler.  Certainly more
> work, certainly means that you won't be able to easily port your
> program to any other machine, but a much cheaper alternative than someone's
> low-volume compiler.  TP is so dominant in the PC Pascal market that
> it's probably been better debugged than anyone else's compiler, and better
> support from a larger user group is available.
> 
I disagree. Now matter how good you are with the profiler, you'll take
a beating using TP to write code for the 80386 compared to almost any
reasonable 32 bit compiler. It's a real drag to put in little assembler
routines all over the place just because you want the power you are
otherwise wasting on your 80386. And then when you move your code over
to a VAX or Sun 4, etc. you're back to square one. I gave up on Borland
moving out of 16-Bit and 64K-array land. Don't look to Microsoft's 
Pascal compiler (with OS/2 'support'), either. That compiler (like
OS/2) is mired in 16-bit code and (this was hard to swallow) doesn't
support big arrays, even though OS/2 does! I turned my back on the whole
lot of this stuff and went to running UNIX instead. (I still get to 
'visit' my DOS children via a dual-boot arrangement).

I looked at various 32-bit extensions to DOS, but there were too many
ifs and buts in any one of them. If your needs are not too general,
this might be the best solution, but it isn't much less expensive than
going UNIX.

Later
Andrew Mullhaupt