Basic RPL question

[DavidM]

(02-28-2016 11:28 PM)David Hayden Wrote:  

Quote:Test1: 18.37 seconds
Test2: 2.12 seconds

Wow that's quite a difference. Does anyone know why the algebraic is so much slower? I would have thought that they'd be nearly identical.

Keep in mind that those were the total durations for 300 iterations of each program.

I haven't traced through the ROM to see what's happening. But it seems evident that the algebraic has to be parsed and re-sequenced into individual operations before execution can occur. When you consider all that can go into an algebraic (global/local variables, constants, operators, parends, etc.), the logic for that EVAL branch has to be fairly complex. I've always assumed that would be the reason for the relative slowness of evaluating an algebraic vs. direct stack operations.