hsgj@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Dan Green) (12/12/87)
In article <1582@ssc-vax.UUCP> dmg@ssc-vax.UUCP (David Geary) writes: >Also, I'd like to hear from anyone who can tell me of the >virtues of upgrading from Lattice 3.03 to Lattice 4.0. [I would have replied by mail, but I can't reply without an arpa address or a full uucp path from a backbone...] I hesitated for a while before upgrading from 3.03 to 4.0, because for a student, $75 is not insignificat (especially at the end of the semester!). However, I did upgrade and I am happy I did so. First of all, the 4.0 manual is infinitely better then the 3.03 paperback one. Second, 4.0 comes with a librarian(!) called "oml" and it also has the latest version of Blink (v7.2). These were a boon for me because (a) I really needed a library of common routines, and (b) my old Blink (version 5 or such) crashed the machine every once in a while, and also guru'd if you hit a CTRL-C. The new blink is much better. Third, and perhaps most important, there are a LOT more builtin library functions, and the library is better organized so that it doesn't include all sorts of junk like 3.03 used to. Besides having more unix functions (like all of the time-of-day functions) it also has a lot of AmigaDOS replacement functions. Eg there is a "getcd" which returns the current direction, a "dfind" and "dnext" which read directories, etc. I spent about a month perfecting my own DOS functions (ok, so I am a slow learner...) -- I sure wish I had had these dos functions earlier! There is also a "fork" command, which appears to be much better then the AmigaDOS "execute". However, I have not tested this out so I can't report on it. Code size and code speed -- my code size for my project decreased by about 20% (150K to 120K). However, there was no apparent change in code speed. I may not have been using the right flags, though -- I just compiled everything with "LC". By the way, LC is much better now and supports more options. Actually, too many options, but that is another story. The summary is that for only $75 I basically got a completely new compiler that is 100% compatible with all my old source files. Not bad! [Note: I have no connection to Lattice Inc or SAS inc]. -- Dan Green -- ARPA: hsgj@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu UUCP: ihnp4!cornell!batcomputer!hsgj BITNET: hsgj@cornella