BV> It's a bit difficult to explain with only words, but consider
 BV> that your cache is only 256k in size, your C program is
 BV> probably 20k but your VB program is perhaps 250k with another
 BV> 250k in a DLL. Then you've got other overheads as well.

  The reality is different. Paul's pkt2qwk.exe is 51760 bytes and mine
is 67606 bytes, but Paul's uses pktjoin {at} 9992 bytes and makemail.bat
{at} 2492 bytes, where mine runs alone. I am talking about VB/DOS and a
standalone exe, with no support DLL needed. My pkt2qwk.exe works quite
happily by itself if I remove everything else from the path. It really
*is* standalone.

  I think Rod's explanation is probably (scream, spits) right. VB must
use more i/o, and C must be more cpu intensive. pkt2qwk is mostly a
loop, and VB is slow on loops. It seems to have overhead just to
repeat the loop, even if I use a goto as the smallest loop. C is much
quicker on loops.

  In any case, this 486 is *too* fast. Paul puts a warning on the 
screen if I forget the "To:" in netmail, but I didn't even see it
yesterday! I'm going to have to add a pause.

Regards,
Bob
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
@EOT:

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