Re: BX ... Q2 vs parentheses

["Charles Creesy" creesy@xxxxxxxx]

First, my thanks to Robert Holmgren for his instructive analysis of what
I will now call an anomaly rather than a bug (I still think this is
an instance of "unruly behavior" on XyWrite's part). Also, I apologize for
my newby-ish behavior; I've been away from XPL for a few years and am not
intimate with all the new function calls and the extended character set.
But I am curious about the injunction:

> The rule is iron clad: Never use parentheses with BlindeXecute (except
> with canned commands like "wait" or "abort"). Use Q2 instead. It's much
> more reliable, and also avoids several unrelated problems with the
> parenthetic form. Just recode your routine as "BX command Q2", and
> rejoice.

When I first wrote my routine, I did use the BX ... Q2 format for the
long series of cha's, and it ran slow as molases. While poking around
in Xywrite's own program files (particularly XYDLG.DLG), I discovered the
parentheses format and then converted over to it. The result was a
tremendous increase in speed, so I concluded the Q2's were slowing
things down and resolved to avoid them. But I was trying a lot of
different things and was not fastidious about isolating each variable
so it is possible something else was really responsible for the speed
loss.  Thus, in all innocence, I ask: has anyone else noted a speed
penalty using Q2 as opposed to parentheses? Can one make an argument
for using Q2 only when the parentheses encounter an anomaly? If not,
why do XyWrite's internal programs use the parentheses form so much?




--Chuck Creesy
Princeton University Press
creesy@xxxxxxxx
609-258-5745  Fax: 609-258-6305