Your post moved me to articulate my thoughts on bechmarking VC++ versus
Delphi versus  BCB.

Almost by definition, this [snipped test] would test something, but I'm not
sure what!  I could imagine many "cheats" to optimise this (convert the
whole thing to lowercase first,  keep a list of occurences of words
beginning with "th" as you read the thing in, maintain two collections one
which sorts forward, and one backwards etc.) but what would it prove? That
one C++ programmer was better than one Delphi programmer?

Personally, I use C++ for the server side of things (COM etc.) and
Delphi/BCB/VB for the GUI, and this works out really well. Nobody is going
to select Delphi or BCB as a development tool because it is faster (or
slower) than VC++ for a particular artificial test - things like training
costs, availability of knowlegeable staff etc. will be much more important.

Bottom line: can't we push Delphi (and BCB) as being complementary to
VC++??? If not, we are losing the Windows environment which, despite the
current Linux fad, is still the only game in town.

NeilB

PS And yes, I do use Linux.