BBS: Inland Empire Archive
Date: 06-13-92 (19:46) Number: 304
From: JEAN CREPEAU Refer#: NONE
To: BUTCH ADAMS Recvd: NO
Subj: Looky-Here Conf: (2) Quik_Bas
In a message to ALL, BUTCH ADAMS wrote:
BA=> Here is an interesting thing I picked up in one of these magazines in
this stack over here this month:
BA=> now add DEFINT A-Z to the top of the code and run again.
BA=> I knew to use integers whenever possible but I had no idea the
difference was this astounding!
The INTEGERS are manipulated directly by the microprocessor, which
can be done quickly. The use of SINGLE or DOUBLE implies the use of a math
co-processor (which is slower) or a math emulator (which is very slow,
compared to integers).
Microsoft QB 1.0 didn't use a math co-processor or a math emulator.
Instead, they had a few routines some for the SINGLE operations, and some
for the DOUBLE. Of course the SINGLE operations were faster than the DOUBLE
ones.
When I got QB 4.0, I noticed that all the SINGLE operations were as
slow as the DOUBLE ones... Microsoft included a math emulator which does
not discriminate SINGLE and DOUBLE. All the floating numbers are treated
equally... I don't think their emulator supports temporary real numbers
(ten bytes) so I guess all the real numbers are treated as DOUBLE. This
means that a SINGLE operation is as slow as a DOUBLE one.
Depending on which version of QB you run your programs, you can get
very different results.
Jean
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