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Re: Crunchie v0.71 beta released

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  Re: Crunchie v0.71 beta released Dave Symes <dave@triffid.co.uk> - 2019-01-02 07:09 +0000
    Re: Crunchie v0.71 beta released Steve Drain <steve@kappa.me.uk> - 2019-01-02 10:15 +0000
      Re: Crunchie v0.71 beta released DavidW1975 <dwilliams64@hotmail.com> - 2019-01-02 03:38 -0800
        Re: Crunchie v0.71 beta released Steve Drain <steve@kappa.me.uk> - 2019-01-02 15:16 +0000
      Re: Crunchie v0.71 beta released druck <news@druck.org.uk> - 2019-01-02 16:21 +0000

#5662 — Re: Crunchie v0.71 beta released

In article <ap.efc4d7576f.a701a0a.m.conroy@argonet.co.uk>,
   Steve Drain <steve@kappa.me.uk> wrote:
> Crunchie is a crunching utility for BASIC files written in BASIC.

> It can be downloaded from:

>   http://kappa.me.uk/Miscellaneous/swCrunchie071.zip

> As far as I know, there is currently no reliable BASIC cruncher that
> runs on RISC OS 5.

[Snip]

Why?

I could understand back in the days, with small amounts of RAM and small
disk storage available...

But now, with large amounts of RAM and disk storage... Why bother?

I ask as an interested, but non programmer...  :-)

Dave

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#5664

Dave Symes wrote:
> Steve Drain wrote:
>> Crunchie is a crunching utility for BASIC files written in BASIC.
> Why?

Because you can? For me it was primarily a plaything at first. ;-)

> I could understand back in the days, with small amounts of RAM and small
> disk storage available...

Memory saving is not a motivation. A relatively small but significant 
speed gain might be.

Obfuscation of programs is, not necessarily for secrecy, but to prevent 
users modifying programs and causing the maintainer problems when it all 
goes wrong. The plain source might also be supplied for public programs, 
but the crunching fixes a working version.

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#5665

On Wednesday, January 2, 2019 at 10:16:01 AM UTC, Steve Drain wrote:

> Memory saving is not a motivation. A relatively small but significant 
> speed gain might be.
> 
> Obfuscation of programs is, not necessarily for secrecy, but to prevent 
> users modifying programs and causing the maintainer problems when it all 
> goes wrong. The plain source might also be supplied for public programs, 
> but the crunching fixes a working version.

Thanks for making Crunchie, Steve. I've been a user of StrongBS in the past, which has its problems of course. I like StrongBS's rather extreme crunching and the little optimisations it performs. I'm into making little games and graphical demos, so program execution speed and high frame rates (preferably matching the screen/monitor's refresh rate) are fairly important to me. I know from some experience that crunching a BASIC program (via StrongBS) can mean the difference between, say, a 60 fps frame rate, and half that! Or the difference between a rock-solid consistent 60 fps, and an inconsistent 60 fps. So, yes, it can make a difference.

I haven't downloaded Crunchie yet, but I certainly will do.

I usually include the uncrunched versions of a program with the crunched one (the latter being the one that I want people to actually run). I'm not at all interested in obfuscating my (usually) crap code; I just want to give the interpreter a little less work to do.


David.
--

http://www.proggies.uk/riscosstuff/index_riscos.html

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#5666

DavidW1975 wrote:

> I've been a user of StrongBS in the past, which has its problems of
 > course. I like StrongBS's rather extreme crunching and the little
 > optimisations it performs.

I think I should make clear that Crunchie will crunch BASIC programs, 
but it will not crunch ALL BASIC programs. It is quite naive and 
programs must be written with crunching in mind. Particularly, they must 
be 'well-formed' with all the right keywords and no tricks. Crunchie is 
also quite simple with the assembler, which is a minefield.

It is no replacement for BC or StrongBS. Sorry.

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#5668

On 02/01/2019 10:15, Steve Drain wrote:
> Obfuscation of programs is, not necessarily for secrecy, but to prevent 
> users modifying programs and causing the maintainer problems when it all 
> goes wrong. The plain source might also be supplied for public programs, 
> but the crunching fixes a working version.

Ironically it probably means there will be more mistakes if anyone tries 
to modify a crunched program, but it's a good point. Perhaps a useful 
feature for both crunched and crunched BASIC programs is generating a 
checksum, and having a routine which warns users that it has been 
modified, and contact the maintainer for a unmodified copy if there are 
problems.

---druck

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