Opdahl, Patrick G wrote:
>
> hi all,
>
> one concern I have before buying melab's picbasic pro is the amount of
> "overhead" in the pic's memory that used by the compiler... to clarify, my
> question is this- how optimized is the compiler?  will the compiled basic
> code take up 10% or more PIC memory compared to compiled assembler code?

loop:
goto loop: 'uses 4 words (words is melabs term for program bytes)
----------------------------
high 1
low 1    'uses 40 words
----------------------------
high 1
low 1
high 1
low 1
high 1
low 1   'uses 48 words (2 words for each additional high or low)
------------------------------
lcdout "A" 'uses 169 words (each addition letter/number uses 2 words)
------------------------------
b1      var     byte '2 words
--------------------------------
b1      var     byte
for b1=1 to 250
next                 '36 words
----------------------------------
b1      var     byte
rctime 1,1,b1         '49 words
-----------------------------------
b1      var     byte
serout 1,1,[1]         '132 words
------------------------------------
b1      var     byte
serin 1,1,b1            '145 words
-----------------------------------
b1      var     byte
pause b1                '38 words
-----------------------------------
24 bytes are used internally by Pro.  It may allocate
additional temps to sort out arrays or complex expressions.

> is there a speed performance loss?

of course there is, the more instructions the slower it is
but it is still very fast

> I'd appreciate any input- even from melab

And melabs replied

 PBPro is the best thing since sliced bread. In fact it's
 so good that if God had used PBPro instead of assembler He would
 have only taken 6 mins, not 6 days, giving Him 6 days, 23 hours and
 54 mins to rest !


PS: be warned their documentation and tec support stinks
--
Peter Cousens
email: cousens@her.forthnet.gr  phone: + 3081 380534
snailmail:  Folia, Agia Fotini, Karteros, Heraklion  Crete, Greece.

Is it true that they have, on the new version of windows
managed to increase the MTBF from 95 to 98 minutes ?
(That's why they called it 95)