Hi Andrew



 AS> Now i am buggered, what on earth is profiler, i have heard of the word but

 AS> have no idea what it is or does...



It came with the standalone debugger for BC3, but they dropped it

for BC4 (lazy scum). Similar environment to the debugger, you get

to tag lines and/or functions, then run the program. When the

program finishes and returns to the profiler, you can see how many

times the tagged lines (or functions) were run, how much time each

line took (time per line and/or total time), and a histogram comparing

all the tagged lines on a number of times or time per line or total

time basis. It can point out a line or a function that takes an

unusual amount of time, or a line or function that is called thirty

jillion times.



Unsuspected timewasting code stands out. For example, it told me

that printing individual characters to the screen is horribly slow,

it's much faster to print them to a string and then print the whole

string in one hit.



 RM> Find the library reference manual (*the* most important book once

 RM> you've got the hang of the language) and look up keyboard and i/o

 RM> routines. Write lots of little tiny programs to get the feel of

 RM> them.



 AS> Yes, i have been having a little read, especially when i want to do

 AS> something with my program, then i have to go and study up on a new

 AS> function or routine.



Good. Again, keep an eye on the functions that are Borland

specific. There's nothing wrong with using them, of course, but you

can save yourself some trauma if you ever change compilers.



Cheers



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