Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!uci-ics!milne
From: milne@ics.uci.edu (Alastair Milne)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Looking for GOOD optimizing compilers for MS-DOS
Message-ID: <25E647B3.438@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Date: 24 Feb 90 08:37:08 GMT
References: <9311@portia.Stanford.EDU> <1541@maytag.waterloo.edu> <21125@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1551@maytag.waterloo.edu>
Lines: 39

dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu (Duncan Murdoch) writes:

>In article <21125@watdragon.waterloo.edu> gcreesor@lotus.waterloo.edu (Glen Reesor) writes:
>>
>>That's quite the blanketing statement about TP being the best Pascal compiler
>>on the market! :-)   TP may have a fancy user interface (which I like too),
>>but if you're looking for better code generation I would look at Microsoft
>>and Watcom compilers (just off the top of my head).  I'm sure you'd agree
>>that these are respectable companies and far from "low-volume". :-)

   It has been 3 or 4 years since my experience with Microsoft Pascal, so it
   may be out of date (I am not considering QuickPascal in any case), but the
   last time I had to use it, it was very big (two passes in separate
   programs, and yet a third if you wanted compile listings), slow, subject to
   large error cascades, and produced huge files -- this of course in
   collaboration with the Microsoft linker, which was horribly slow.  The
   resulting EXE's were huge.  In fact, I consulted the net at the time to see
   if anybody could tell me how to reduce them.

   Obviously, this all contrasts markedly with Borland's compiler.  Code
   generation, compile time, and program size are all *much* better.  And it
   can hardly cascade: at the first error it finds, it goes straight back into
   the editor.  This used to drive me balmy, but with the compile speed,
   especially on a 386, the time to recompile between fixing successive errors
   is rarely worth worrying about.

   (Once, when making these observations to a friend, I was told that all
   compilers for micros cascade badly if allowed.  Well, the UCSD Pascal
   compiler, under the p-System, does not.  It controls cascades very well.
   And that's what I was used to before this.

   Maybe just DOS Pascal compilers cascade badly :-) . )

   If there are better compilers than Borland's available, I'm sure all the
   world would like to hear of them.  Borland's have become rather good,
   but I certainly wouldn't object to better.  What is Watcom's like?


   Alastair Milne