Zugg Software :: View topic - [2.11] Var recompiled (String)

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

With the next timestamps, I can probably get rid of this variable, but even so, is the bolded part to be expected, or is slowing my scripts unnecessarily?

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 11:47 pm

Yes, CMUD does a simple check on a string variable to determine if it contains the % or @ character. If it does, then it compiles it so that it can execute the resulting code once and get the proper expanded value of the string. Something that simple should be pretty quick to compile though...really the same amount of time that zMUD itself would use to expand the string and concat the result together into a string value.

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

OK, it was only 6 milliseconds on that occasion too, although I have seen it take up to 0.0166 of a second. It would probably be less if I changed the variable to Use default though. EDIT: Hmm, no, not really - perhaps just less variation.

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 1:20 am

Keep in mind that there is line-to-line variation in the delta time just from when the screen decides to update itself. For example, if your Refresh preference is set to 5 (the default), then CMUD refreshes the screen every 5 lines. Turn on delta times and do a Ctrl-Q test and you'll see that every 5th line has a higher time. When you are talking about the difference between 6 and 16 ms, that can often be just the refresh time difference.

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

I've never really understood that option. Surely the screen must refresh more than every 5 lines, or when you received 1 line, it wouldn't be displayed until another 4 lines arrived? Or does it also refresh when it detects a prompt?

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 3:42 am

It also refreshes when it gets a prompt. So the refresh optimization only kicks in when scrolling a large amount of text. The idea was to improve speed, but still ensure that your eye would have a chance to see the text scrolling by. You can play with the Refresh preference to see the difference. Change it to 0 and it will *only* refresh when it gets a prompt (or end of network packet). Do Ctrl-Q and you'll only see the screen update once at the very end, and you'll see that the speed given is *very* fast. Then, change the Refresh amount to 1 to force it to refresh on every line. You'll notice that the scrolling is a bit smoother, but much slower. I have found that the default setting of 5 is a good compromise between these two extremes.

Wizard Joined: 14 Aug 2004 Posts: 1269

Ah, OK, that makes sense now. I'll give it a go then sometime.

Enchanter Joined: 09 Sep 2007 Posts: 605

And what about such an example:

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 5:18 pm

That is actually ok...I just need to remove that line from the debugger. Notice the (), that means there isn't any code associated with the variable. That means it's a literal value (like "Arde") and doesn't need to be compiled. So of course the compile fails for that case. In fact, it doesn't even call the compiler at all in that case. So I just need to prevent this from showing up in the debug log. Thanks for reporting it.