[Coco] Why DECB is important to OS-9 folk.

[Tony Schountz]

On Sep 9, 2005, at 4:43 PM, Alex Evans wrote:

> On Sep 9, 2005, at 9:18 AM, Robert Emery wrote:
>
>
>> I know, I was being a bit facetious there I guess... Regarding  
>> B-09, C and
>> Pascal,  all being compiled languages I don't think we'll see any  
>> One-Liners
>> there either. Of course I've seen OS-9 commands that were longer  
>> than some
>> Basic one-liners. ;)
>>
>> If I could make a wish...
>> I'd like to see a "hybrid" Basic where we could type in and run  
>> programs at
>> will and then compile them for the speed and size benefits. I  
>> believe this has
>> been done, not sure about platform or compatibility.
>>
>
> Actually, this is sort of what BasicO9 is.  You can interactively  
> run programs, or pack them into an intermediate code similar to  
> that which is often used with Java.  On top of that OS-9 Pascal  
> normally "compiles" to P-code, another of these intermediate system  
> independent codes which are part of the way between compilation and  
> interpretation.


Supposedly, you can run P-code programs that are 8 mb in size in OS9  
Pascal. I don't think I'd like to write a program that big, although  
a Very Large Array might do the trick in a few lines of code.

Compiled Pascal programs (assembled with asm) are generally much  
faster (8-10x) than packed Basic09 programs. But it's a bit more  
clunky than Basic09, IMHO.