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- SAP 5.0 Note August, 7, 1986
-
-
- I would like to respond to Irv Hoff's comments in SAP49.WRN. He does
- have a valid point that SAP49.COM as assembled would delete all zero-length
- files and could thus hurt those people who use such files for disc
- cataloging programs. In SAP50.COM I have compiled with SAVDASH set to YES
- to not have this problem. But his complaint that the code was written for
- Z80MR which he says most people don't have is weak. The only difference (in
- the code) from Z80MR and any other Z80 compiler is the format of the
- expressions. Why couldn't you simply change the couple dozen lines of code
- with expressions in them? As for the difficulty involved, only the equates
- for YES and UNSPECI have such expressions. All the other expressions are
- parts of conditional IF statements which could easily be globally searched
- for. But even if I tried to do this trivial work for you, I don't have M80
- to test whether it would assemble, which is why I didn't even try. Later on
- this September I should get M80 so I will make my submittals assemble with
- it.
- As for the extra speed I claimed, I based that claim on the fact that I
- removed many extraneous instructions or slow code, always making sure that
- the replacement code was less bytes and/or less cycles. If the overall
- speed is about the same then it is probably because the bulk of the time is
- spent doing disk i/o which swamps any benefit during the sort. I shouldn't
- have emphasized the new speed, I'm sorry, but it is quicker. Doing just a
- quick test with SAP 50 and SAP 43 I found that SAP 50 was barely faster.
- Ok, but it works, which is more than can be said for SAP 43!
- And finally, the main point is that SAP 43 would crasch CP/M in
- attempting to sort a directory that wouldn't fit in memory. SAP50 will tell
- you that it can't sort everything and it will sort as much as will fit in
- memory. And how long does it take to sort a hard disk directory? Mine only
- takes 12.95 seconds (it didn't all fit in memory, so this is probably a
- maximum time).
- Richard Huff