The fight starts:-) P-code VS Native Code

Hello guys. I would like to now what the differences (advantages and disadvantages) between P-code and Native Code which i've seen in VB.
Thankz

its my understanding P-code optimizes for the pentium instruction set.

i never make anything large enough where i have to worry about it.

I thought that P-code used the VB6 dlls, whereas native code compiled everything into one executable file (or the other way round).

Thankz.

looks like i didn't understand it too well:

http://www.vbsquare.com/php-bin/prin...iclepageid=774

P-Code VS Native Code:
One thing you might have noticed is that you can choose whether to compile your software as Native Code or P-Code (pseudocode). The default option is Native code and should be left like that.

What is P-Code?
When pressing the Start button in the Visual Basic IDE, the Visual Basic compiles each line into P-Code and interprets it. This is much faster than Native Code in the IDE circumstance. By choosing to compile your software into P-Code, Visual Basic will store that code into an EXE where it will be interpreted line by line for the rest of its life

What is Native Code?
Native Code came out with Visual Basic 6.0. Running Native code is much faster than running P-Code in an exe case. When compiling to Native Code, Visual Basic compiles your software into the instruction set of the processor chip on your system

One thing I’ve noticed in Native Code, that unlike P-Code, it might give you strange bugs. Many of you might not have faced such a problem but I have. My code runs perfectly in the IDE as it runs P-Code. But after I compile it, I sometimes (very rarely) get strange errors. Most of them occur while unloading forms or some of them occur while displaying the Printer Dialog box over a modal form. I resolved these problems by putting the “DoEvents” statement in-between the code. I repeat, this happens only rarely and with some types of software.

So what should you use? Leave it to Native Code.

Optimize For Fast Code:
This option is only available if you decide to compile your software to Native Code. This tries optimizing the code to make it faster but it might compile larger. This should remain checked.

Optimize For Small Code:
This isn’t recommended. This option is able to shrink the size of the software but by making it slower.

No Optimization:
The compiler will simply convert the P-Code to Native Code without any optimizations. Only recommended if you are constantly getting errors in your compiled software.

Favor Pentium Pro:
Although this isn’t the default option for the Native Code compiler, I always check it and would recommend you check it to. Favor Pentium Pro allows you to favor the Pentium Pro instruction set over the normal Pentium one. This could cause your software to run much faster on Pentium Pro and Pentium 2 + machines. Checking this does not mean that it will not run on other computers, it will just run a little slower. A risk I’m willing to take knowing many users use Pentium machines these days and not 486s.

Your computer only runs one kind of code,
machine code.
To run P code, it must interpret it at runtime,
assuming you have the interpreter.
An interpreted language is portable, if the interpreter
has been ported to your architecture.
A program written in machine code may be very
short and efficient, but is not portable.

There's a lot of overhead involved in the search
for the "holy grail" of portability.
That's why you have to have a pentium III
to do the work that you used to be able to do
on a 286
:cool:

A book i have read, says that it's better to compile with P-code than Native Code, because it runs every part of the programme and it sees for errors.

P-code means "precompiled code" this type of code is interpreted by the VB dll's. if you compile in native code, the program will be faster but the VB runtime dll's will be always loaded to ensure the VB error handling.

Sorry andreanobile, but i've heard that P-code means Pseydo-code.