[fpc-pascal] FPC now 3rd in shootout

[L]

> > > There has been a long discussion on the Shootout forums about it. Isaac
> > > believes that it is more fair this way for languages that don't have all
> > > benchmarks implemented. Now we simply have to make him retract all our
> > > poor performing programs :)
> >
> > Exactly.  A not very fast language can win the shootout
> > if it is faster than every other language for just one benchmark
> > and if only the program for that benchmark is submitted.
> >

People will ignore the ones with just a single test anyway..

When I look at them, for example, I ignore the ones with only two or three
tests.

I think they understand that some people have common sense enough not to count
the ones with only 1 or 2 completed tests.

Instead of penalizing the ones with 1 or 2 tests, they should simply make it
mandatory for the language to at least complete X amount of tests (i.e. 5 or 10
or however many).

The funny thing I see is everyone recommending Pchars. Why not
setlength/uniquestring? Still too slow? Several years/months ago, when I posted
something on the mailing lists about how trying to defeat the compiler with
reference counting basically leads to more work than just taking matters into
your own hands with pchars.. it led to some heated arguments.  For example
some said that the compiler didn't need to use pchars and it was fast.. hmm
I wonder if maybe there are some reference counting slowdowns in the 
compiler that slow it down a bit. Although I realize it uses shortstrings
for a lot of stuff.