[fpc-pascal] FPC now 3rd in shootout

[Daniël Mantione]

Op Tue, 6 Nov 2007, schreef L:

> The funny thing I see is everyone recommending Pchars. Why not
> setlength/uniquestring? Still too slow?

Memory management, especially when you get reallocations, is expensive. 
With case ansistrings can perform well. However, you do have to care, and 
Pchars can always be faster.

> 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.

The compiler uses shortstrings internally, which are the fastest string 
type. Pchars are between ansistrings and strings, but offer the least 
comfort of all.

Daniël