Hisoft's compiler for Locomotive Basic is one of the fastest things I have come across on a home micro. Locomotive is far from a slow Basic and to produce code that can run from about 10 to 80 times faster is something that shouldn't be sneezed at. Unfortunately anyone who has experience of compilers will be able to guess from the above speeds that Turbo Basic is an integer only compiler and any routine that uses floating point arithmetic will not work - for many programs this will not matter but remember that it also excludes things such as Cos and Sin. I do wish that it took a leaf from Ocean's Laser Compiler and given advice on things such as how to draw circles using integers only. Other restrictions are that Print Using cannot be used, strings must be of a user definable fixed length that cannot be exceeded and system variables such as time and Rnd work in a different way. The actual compilation is controlled by a memory resident program called by RSX basic commands. Longer things can be compiled to and from tape or disc. In some ways anyone who writes a Basic compiler is on a hiding to nothing. It is never the sort of magic wand that many expect it to be and there are always more criticisms or omissions to mention than positive points. But as long as you don't expect to be able to compile your entire Basic collection you will find that Turbo Basic is a very powerful and breathtakingly fast tool. Tony Kendle , PopularComputingWeekly860814 |