"Debug" pushing my modest program space over the edge

[HankMcSpank]

At the minute I'm using a lowly 12lf1822...beucase it has the features I need.......with the small footprint.

I'm right on the edge of filling up the available 4096 kbytes, but I've noticed something peculiar (to me at least)

Consider the following...

debug dec temp ' output the contents of a variable

with the above enabled, my program compiles at 2010 words.

versus

debug "t" ' output the letter t.

but with the above enabled, my program compiles at just 1945 words.

so the former uses up 65 more 'words' of program space?!!!



Why would asking for the debug contents of a word variable apparently use up so much more program space?