Re: BX ... Q2 vs parentheses

[Robert Holmgren holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

Chuck:

I presume you have a copy of ITERATE.PM by Carl Distefano? In SmartSet?
Using the 11/11/95 revision of ITERATE, I get these results doing 10,000
iterations of the following commands (about 5 runs per command, to get a
range of results) in XyDOS v4.017:

BX (se/t |a|) -- between 6.09-6.17 secs
BX se/t |a|Q2 -- between 6.10-6.15 secs

Those results are identical. There is no speed difference. The reason to
use Q2 is that people have PROBLEMS with the parenthetic form! Which they
can't fix! Lots of different kinds of problems. Total line length can
become an issue, for example, with parentheses; you really want to avoid
parens with any kind of unpredictable|variable user input, e.g. a  in
the middle of a command. How many times have you read msgs from users in
which, as a mere aside, they mention that a command worked almost all --
but not QUITE all -- of the time? An "anomaly" too minor to pursue... It's
a good tip, believe me, this Q2 thing. I'd rather not comment on XyQuest
programming. They are, at best, inconsistent in their practices.
I don't use their stuff.


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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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