wow QuickBASIC v7.1 PDS

[Mike Chambers]

i never paid much attention to QB71, and have always used QB45 but i decided to give it a go here. i have discovered a very nice little feature here. it allows variables to be allocated to memory as far pointers rather than just near pointers like QB45.

this is going to give me so much more room for data in the IRC server i'm writing. i probably won't ever use QB45 again haha. there are a lot of other cool things about it too.

 

[ziloo]

... it allows variables to be allocated to memory as far pointers rather than just near pointers like QB45...this is going to give me so much more room for data in the IRC server i'm writing...

Hello Mike,

Would you please elaborate more about the use of far pointers in your program...

Thank you

ziloo

 

[Unknown_K]

7.1 does seem nice, not sure why you would use 4.5 if you had both.

I have a boxed 7.1 on the shelf waiting for me to quit messing with hardware and get to programming someday.

 

[Mike Chambers]

Hello Mike,

Would you please elaborate more about the use of far pointers in your program...

Thank you

ziloo

well, it doesn't let you manually define a variable pointer like with C. what i mean is that in QB45, all variables and the program itself all have to fit inside of one memory segment - it's very limiting.

in QB71, you can have it put all your variables in a different segment than the program is in so you have a huge increase in storage capacity for your variables.

 

[Trixter]

Is the compiler any more efficient? (ie. are the compiled programs faster than 4.5?)

 

[Mike Chambers]

Is the compiler any more efficient? (ie. are the compiled programs faster than 4.5?)

i haven't really compared. so far they seem about the same. there are some options in QB71's compiler that i haven't messed with yet.

here are 2 screen shots to compare the "make EXE file" dialog box for both 4.5 and 7.1


first 4.5:

and now 7.1:

i need to take a look in the help files so i can find out more info about it all. when i first saw "disable string compression" i was thinking, oh that should make it faster! but it turns out that it only applies to the .OBJ file or something that it makes during the compile process. the EXE file always has uncompressed strings.