[fpc-pascal] with statement using mulltiple objects

[Jim Leonard]

On 9/13/2014 2:02 PM, Sven Barth wrote:
> It has always worked in this manner. It's just for abbreviating typing,
> not for combining properties. (and then the with-variant with multiple
> elements is even more seldomly used than the single-element one...)

In the Turbo Pascal days, WITH allowed for some user-directed compiler 
optimization.  From the TP7 manual:

"In certain situations, Turbo Pascal's code generator can eliminate 
redundant pointer-load instructions, shrinking the size of the code and 
allowing for faster execution. When the code generator can guarantee 
that a particular pointer remains constant over a stretch of linear code 
(code with no jumps into it), and when that pointer is already loaded 
into a register pair (such as ES:DI), the code generator eliminates 
additional redundant pointer-load instructions in that block of code.

A pointer is considered constant if it's obtained from a variable 
parameter (variable parameters are always passed as pointers) or from 
the variable reference of a WITH statement. Because of this, using WITH 
statements is often more efficient (but never less efficient) than 
writing the fully-qualified variable for each component reference."
-- 
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)
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