Does a Smaller EXE size equates to Better Execution Speed ?

Recently, I had discovered that an EXE created by Minigui+Harbour 2.1 was 800K smaller than an EXE created with HMG+Harbour 2.0. A series of discussion with Viktor and Grigory Filatov confirmed that the smaller EXE was due to the usage of Borland C Compiler by Minigui as compared with MingW32. But it does not end here :-)

Viktor as well as Gustavo of the Minigui forum convinced me that a smaller EXE does not mean faster execution.

1) Gustavo Asborno

Hi Chee Chong Hwa, The size difference between HMG and Miniguide be only the compiler, HMG uses Mingw, which creates larger exes, but is superior in speed, while loading windows.

2) Gustavo Asborno
Hi CCH, I mean in the execution, for example if we have a window with many controls in an ABM my case, there are 98 in a Textbox Tab, at the beginningof the ABM and the controls are going dabdole Enabled: =. F. Borland is avisual effect of this work with Mingw this is not reflected, the load is instantaneous.

3) Viktor
Yes, bcc produces smaller but much slower exes. bcc is by far the slowest of all Windows C compilers.

4)CCH: BTW, don't you think that is a paradox that a smaller EXE executes slower  than a bigger EXE ;-)

Viktor :

It may be surprising at first, but this is a classic optimization problem. In most C compilers you
must chose between size and speed (and there is usually some balanced optimum in between).

F.e.:
 FOR tmp := 1 TO 5
    ? tmp
 NEXT
is smaller, but slower than this:
 ? 1
 ? 2
 ? 3
 ? 4
 ? 5

This is called loop unrolling optimization, and just one of the many possibilities.

5. CCH :So it is not only a launch time issue but execution throughout the app ?

Viktor : 

It's execution speed.

[ Raw launch time is mainly influenced by other things, like storage
medium, number of .dll dependencies, exe compression. Plus of
course any application level init code, which is affected by execution
speed. ]

So, it would appear that it may be worthwhile to try recompiling the mingui.lib using MIngW32 :-)

So the next article would be to let Walter Formigoni to teach us how to do so