From: johnl@taugh.com   
      
   According to Terje Mathisen  :   
   >> 40 years ago, Duff's device was considered a reasonable way to improve   
   >> performance. It is now considered a means to take over applications   
   >   
   >Was it ever that?   
   >   
   >Yes, it was a very compact way to express the same logic you would use   
   >in asm to jump into the correct spot of an unrolled loop, but did it   
   >actually save any time compared to a plain unroll followed by a final fixup?   
      
   Time, no, but on a 64K machine space was precious and it got much of the   
   benefit of unrolling without as much space.   
      
   >Duff would never compile into anything strange, but as a way to   
   >obfuscate it could work I guess? Absolutley no need to flag it as   
   >malware/virus!   
      
   Agreed, it was ugly but quite legit.   
      
   --   
   Regards,   
   John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for   
   Dummies",   
   Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)