George,
>The disagreement here is over whether or not the calls to the MAX() (or MIN()) function are significant. My position is why insert additional, and unnecessary, and only have to go back later and deal with performance issue. You have a P4 2, at work, I use a P3 933. I can't control the computers that are running my systems. In fact, there are Win95 systems. Why, then should I introduce anything that would
potentially cause a problem?
We've discussed this already. You're on the standpoint you don't wan't to add extra overhead, (though its in worst case its minor constant and predictable) in favour of compatibility. I'll have to respect that standpoint, though I don't understand it. I do have mine where I'm on the standpoint that the overhead is insignificant and not noticible by users. I don't see any way this could lead into performance trouble. Given the examplles I've given in this thread I did come to the conclusion that the overhead of one MAX() function is the same as the most lightweight p-code instruction I could think of
= 1
namely 0.05 seconds for 300.000 iterations on my PIV 2Ghz. (On my AMD 750 it seems to be arround 0.15 seconds) I think we should agree to disagree here.
On sidenote, I must admit that the testresults of the latest example were not reproducable at a later time, nor do I get any constant results. most of the time the difference between embedded functions and non - embedded functions seems to be arround 10 - 20% (regardless of the processor speed). Not an inmense difference, but still measurable.
>As to your answer about my question. I think that there may be a problem with language here. What you refer to as "flags" are more generally called "tokens". Given that, here's my next question...
>How are tokens utilized and what do they represent?
I don't fully understand you question, But the tokes (yes, I was searching for this word), as I said are used by the interpretor to identify the presence of the optional clauses and the location of the p-coded expressions used in those clauses.
Walter,
