>Bruce,
>
>au contraire, I removed the first version of Borland C++ compiler I got because it created a 10 meg debug file from a relatively small project. MS C++ debug files were about 500k. This was back in the days of 100-200 meg drives

Now that you mention it, I think I remember large "run-time" debug files...

>There is more than just debug info in the .pdb files it's also intermediate compiler output to speed the compile of your code that uses MFC. So you trade disk space for compile speed.

I shouldn't need to care nowadays about diskspace, and don't on my own machine, but here at work they still order desktops with small diskspace (well, only 2-4 GB), since we have huge (and more secure) server space -- but these PDBs need to go locally, I presume, so they're competing with other more urgent space needs :) If I ever need them, I'll shuffle things around and reinstall...