Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

's P-Code, short for packed code, is an intermediate language

Intermediate language

In computer science, an intermediate language is the language of an abstract machine designed to aid in the analysis of computer programs. The term comes from their use in compilers, where a compiler first translates the source code of a program into a form more suitable for code-improving...

 that provides an alternate binary format to native code

Machine code

Machine code or machine language is a system of impartible instructions executed directly by a computer's central processing unit. Each instruction performs a very specific task, typically either an operation on a unit of data Machine code or machine language is a system of impartible instructions...

 for any compiled binary (e.g.: DLL

DLL

DLL may refer to:* Data link layer, a layer in the OSI network architecture model* Delay-locked loop, a device to reduce clock skew in digital circuits* Doubly linked list, a data structure in computer programming...

s, ActiveX controls

Component Object Model

Component Object Model is a binary-interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages...

, or Applications). Its primary goal is to produce smaller files. P-Code binaries require an additional runtime library to execute. Both the 16-bit Visual C++ and Visual Basic

Visual Basic

Visual Basic is the third-generation event-driven programming language and integrated development environment from Microsoft for its COM programming model...

compilers support P-Code.

Using P-Code in Visual Basic

(Version 6) Open the project; open the Project Properties dialog; click on the Compile tab; click the option button Compile to P-Code.

Using P-Code in Visual C++

To turn on use of P-Code, use the Pragma directive, i.e.:

 //Turn P-Code on

 #pragma optimize("q", on)



 //Turn P-Code off

 #pragma optimize("q", off)

This feature is only supported in 16-bit version of Visual C++, however.