gcc40 builds smaller executables

[walt]

I've seen the liturature saying that gcc40 builds larger and
slower executables than gcc3, but (for me) the files are in
fact slightly smaller.  Just a few examples:

I tried building the 'zip' package and here are the files

from gcc34:
 62140 May 10 20:02 zip*
 26772 May 10 20:02 zipcloak*
 22588 May 10 20:02 zipnote*
 23292 May 10 20:02 zipsplit*

from gcc40:
 61692 Jun 13 09:38 zip*
 26708 Jun 13 09:38 zipcloak*
 22524 Jun 13 09:38 zipnote*
 23548 Jun 13 09:38 zipsplit*

Only one of the four files is larger with gcc40, three are smaller.

Some kernel modules, picked at random:

gcc34:
 369790 Jun 12 08:21 acpi.ko
 402818 Jun 12 08:21 digi.ko

gcc40:
 365814 Jun 13 09:05 acpi.ko
 402536 Jun 13 09:05 digi.ko

Bear in mind that I routinely use the march=athlon-xp flag which
generates significantly bigger files than the i686 flag, so YMMV.

I can't comment on the 'slower executable' claims -- I've done
no benchmarking of any kind.