On Thu, 22 May 2003, Nigel Garvey
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>There are two later optimisations of the last line. Richard Hartman's:
>
>  set monthNum to 1 + (theDate - b) div 2500000
>
>... and mine:
>
>  set monthNum to (theDate - b + 3944592) div 2629728

It took me a while to see their point, but is their "advantage"
actually measurable?  I suppose with a g3/g4 running a zillion
iterations one might notice something...

>French Vanilla is attributed to Emmanuel, but I'd like to know who
>coined
>the name. I thought it was Richard Morton, but he thinks it was you,
>Joe.
>Any comment?

Richard pursued the routine's optimisation/universalisation (is that
a word?) as a method (i.e. rather than just speed as such?), and
wrote his tutorial (possibly following the example of John Delacour,
or others who were writing snippets to html for the rest of us to
largely ignore/forget the url?).  I have a more than sneaking
suspicion that it may have been Emmanuel who coined the name, but I
could be wrong.  I, alas, was in large part the instigator of a race
to find the fastest method, which had some earlier unfortunate, ugly
consequences that are best left unmentioned.  Thankfully, the
innocent party involved is now making apparently fairly satisfactory
money from other pursuits.

2 groszy

Selected from Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary":
ENCOMIAST, n. -- A special (but not particular) kind of liar.