--- Sebastien Lelong : Hi, As for print.jal, if code usage is far lesser than current one, I think it's worth updating the library despiste some loss of readability. Comments are here to help. I've observed using print.jal is quite a consuming lib.
I thought about completely rewriting print.jal, but having tried a little example like var byte dummy var dword counter for 4_294_967_295 using counter loop print_dword_dec(dummy,counter) end loop I found out to my big surprise that current print.jal *does* generate small code. (Compiler=2.4n) On a 16f722 it is Code 302 Data 44 Stack 2. The "looped subtracion" variant takes Code 374 Data 27 Stack 3. It could use Stack 2 with about Code 400. Another point could be execution time. print.jal does up to 20 divisions of 32bit numbers for printing dwords. And, the advantage in code size is gone when only printing words. A similar program (word instead of dword) compiles to this: current Code 283 Data 40 Stack 2 new Code 186 Data 14 Stack 2 More things to think about: If you're printing dwords with current print.jal, you'll get the word, byte and even all the signed types output almost for free. The new version adds code for each additional type. If your program already does use 32bit divisions, the advantage in code size is negative with the new version. Perhaps the solution would be a new lib, like print_simple, that is to be used for small projects that run on little devices. It could e.g. only output (s)byte and (s)word. When only outputting bytes, the difference is impressive: current Code 272 Data 38 Stack 2 new Code 92 Data 11 Stack 2 That is less than one third for both code and data usage. I'd call that an improvement. Now back on the main topic: lib usability vs. performance. I think what we currently lack is some kind of metrics. It's hard to tell whether using a lib adds value or not. Very difficult... As mentioned, there is not only used memory, but also execution time which can not be determined by the compiler. And, to stay with the print.jal example, the code usage of the lib could be masked if a user program already uses 32bit divisions. But in general it would be of course a great thing to have some information not only about the benefits of a lib, but also about the cost in memory and such. Greets, Kiste -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "jallib" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jallib?hl=en.
