[fpc-pascal] options for better performance & declaration of system procedures

[章宏九]

2009/9/24 Jonas Maebe <jonas.maebe at elis.ugent.be>:
>
> On 24 Sep 2009, at 10:31, 章宏九 wrote:
>
>> I just tried to unfairly compare fpc-compiled binary and gcc-compiled
>> binary under my Gentoo box. FPC is incredible. `ps` data shows the fpc
>> one costs nearly no memory?
>
> The FPC run time library is much less extensive than the GNU C library
> (e.g., it does not include all of the locale information that the C library
> has). In case you are linking statically, then you should also note that the
> GNU C library is absolutely not optimized in any way to produce small
> binaries when  linking statically (while the FPC run time library /is/
> optimized for that purpose). A comparison with something like uClibc would
> probably give somewhat more comparable results.
>
> I'm also not sure how you are measuring "memory usage". If you are looking
> at the VSIZE, note that this does not mean anything (since not all that
> memory is actually used; RSS is better).
>

Not VSIZE. RSS. I know these are not accurate data. And I said this is
unfair, rather unfair. I read shootout.alioth.debian.org. Their result
might be more accurate, which proves that fpc does. I know all these
test cannot tell everything. But qualitative result are approximately
the same and, IMHO, can be refered.

>> But I still notice it is a little slow. It
>> usually costs 0.5~1.0 time more than the gcc one. It seems as if fpc
>> saves memory in the cost of performance loss. Is it true?
>
> No. FPC simply has a lot less optimization passes than gcc. Depending on the
> compiled program and the host processor, this may matter a lot or very
> little.
>
>> If so, is
>> there any options for better performance and no such insane memory
>> saving?
>
> The memory usage is completely unrelated to the code speed.
>
>> Another question. I cannot find any declaration of the system
>> procedures such as WriteLn and ReadLn. I tried to find in fpcsrc
>> directory with grep but achieve nothing. FreePascal's documents says
>> the declarations are in rtl but the line number is 0. Are these system
>> procedures implemented in the compiler(built-in) or in the system
>> unit?
>
> read(ln)/write(ln) is handled internally in the compiler, and translated
> into calls to different helpers in the RTL based on the actually used types.
> You can find these helpers in rtl/inc/text.inc (search for fpc_read and
> fpc_write). You can also compile with -al and look at the resulting .s files
> to see how the compiler translates the Pascal statements into assembler code
> (and which helpers it calls).
>
>> I would like also to know the situation in C. (I mean
>> declaration of printf and scanf. Are they implemented in glibc or
>> gcc?)
>
>
> In glibc.
Unlike pascal?
>
>
> Jonas_______________________________________________
> fpc-pascal maillist  -  fpc-pascal at lists.freepascal.org
> http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
>

(Your swift response surprised me...)