PE> Same program, meant to delete the name of the program so as 
 PE> to avoid confusion.  Remember that every single function is 
 PE> declared as inline, and Borland won't inline things with 
 PE> "for", "while" etc in it, whereas it looks like
IBM will go 
 PE> for broke.  BFN.

 PM> So, based on your figures, when compiling with the 
 PM> optimiser turned on, Borland compiles 56 times faster (9 
 PM> secs versus 505 secs), it produces code that is 25% the 
 PM> size (30K versus 120K), and that runs only 7% slower (41 
 PM> secs versus 38 secs), is no doubt cheaper and is a lot more 
 PM> straight forward to install (see below). The Borland 
 PM> compiler sounds like a real bargin doesn't it. Pity about 
 PM> the bugs in it though.

Once again, I must stress that this test wasn't particularly fair, and I
happen to like the fact that it spent a long time trying to optimize my
program instead of just "she'll be right mate".  Since all these
functions were being inlined, it is understandable that the executable
would be bigger.  Since they were being inlined and subsequently optimized,
it is understandable that it would take longer to compile.  As for the 7%
slower, well the bottleneck in the code (from memory) was, like most of my
programs, in about one line of code, which couldn't be done faster even in
assembler (something basic like adding 10 to a pointer and looking at one
character), so the compiler only had the rest of the program to optimize. 
Perhaps you've got a program you could put through both compilers?

 PM> INSTALLING IBM C SET++

I think I'll give this note to someone at IBM, to see if they want to take
your comments into account.

 PM> A (rather small) box lands on my desk today. At last I can 
 PM> do some useful work, thinks I, after hitting my head 
 PM> against the brick wall known as Communications Manager 
 PM> (I'll save my rave about this product for another time) for 
 PM> two weeks trying to get it to talk LU 6.2 to the 
 PM> mainframe.

But once you've done it, remember that you can have square brackets, and
live in C paradise (C with square brackets on MVS).

 PM> I opened the box and searched though the small number of 
 PM> manuals and bits of paper (IBM has this fixation on soft 
 PM> copy manuals) to find the installation steps. It talks 
 PM> about Workframe/2, the Toolkit and the compiler. Well, I've 

And it's pretty difficult finding that little piece of paper which
basically means "start here, this is the most important one".  I
went looking at some of the other manuals first, and gave up and looked at
the other stuff.

 PM> packet of disks and the last ones are in the first packet), 
 PM> the README file pops up to keep me amused. It says that if 
 PM> you are going to program in C++ and, on the off chance you 
 PM> want to use NULL in your programs, you have to edit one of 
 PM> the header files and fix it up. Now obviously, using NULL 
 PM> in a C++ program is a rare occurance, since this wasn't 
 PM> picked up during the testing of the compiler. Maybe I'm 

Yes, I found that strange, and decided to ignore it.

 PM> Finally the install has finished! Er, hang on, what are 
 PM> these three disks I still have left over? They are marked 
 PM> "Toolkit Debugger" or some such. Now I remember saying 
 PM> during the compiler install that I wanted the debugger 
 PM> installed, so what's going on here? I found a manual that 
 PM> describes this (appears to be a debug version of the OS/2 
 PM> kernal) but there are no install instructions in the 
 PM> manual. Look on the disk, and find a "DBUGINST" (surprise, 
 PM> surprise).

Hmmm, can't remember what I did with that.

 PM> [NOTE: at this point in my rave, OS/2 decided it had had 
 PM> enough of me knocking IBM and it terminated my editor (who 
 PM> said OS/2 wasn't a clever operating system). Luckily my 
 PM> editor keeps a back up and I only lost the last line. Back 
 PM> to the story...]

You can download emacs from me, did you know it is free for commercial use?
 32-bit OS/2 version even.  Compiled with BC++ for OS/2!

 PM> Open the box and throw away the install guide. Put the 
 PM> first disk in, type "INSTALL" (Borland) or "SETUP" 

Yes, I fail to see why IBM's couldn't have been the same.
Paul

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