Date : Wed, 23 Apr 1986 16:48:12 GMT
From : John Pantone <jnp%calmasd.calma.uucp@BRL.ARPA>
Subject: Re: req. C compiler
In article <3362@mnetor.UUCP>, clewis@mnetor.UUCP (Chris Lewis) writes:
> In article <85@brl-smoke.ARPA> Ghenis.pasa@xerox.ARPA writes:
> >Small-C is cute, but non-standard. For as little as $39.95 you can get
> >MIX-C, which claims to be full K&R standard compatible, and comes with a
> >400 page manual and tutorial (a very good value, in my opinion). The
> >tradeoff is it doesn't produce very efficient code. There are other C
> >compilers for CP/M for under $100, see magazines like Byte, Dr. Dobbs,
> >etc for ads. If you're interested in learning about compilers, Q/C comes
> >with full source for itself written in C ($99 for the whole package).
>
> I think you're confusing "Small-C" with "Tiny-C". Tiny-C isn't really C,
> its syntax is rather different. If I recall correctly, Tiny-C was an
> interpretive language, and about the first thing even close to C on the
> market for micros. I think that it came without machine-readable media,
> and you had to type in the interpreter code (but I may be completely out
> of wack). I think that it was the first package Lifeboat ever distributed.
>
> Small-C V1.0 was written by Ron Cain, complete sources including bare-bones
> 8080 run-time support were published in Dr. Dobbs about 4-5 years ago.
Dr. Dobbs' now offers the "latest and greatest" Small-C source on disk
for around $30. And the documentation in book form for even less.
> It's syntax was *almost* completely compatible with C (only a minor bitch
> than one "indirection"), and a few other minor glitches (eg: missing all
> of the assignment operators except "=" etc.).
New version has all assignment operators, and multiple indirection.
> It was a fairly impressive achievment even so - Ron Cain had obviously
> never seen a compiler before (eg: it had no true "scanner" - which would have
> speeded it up rather drastically), and, inspite of the drastic subsetting,
> could compile itself rather handily - on a single SSSD 8" CPM disk!
>
> Small-C didn't optimize the output (assembler by the way) at all.
Does so now - with a pee-hole optimizer compile-time option.
[ a bunch of stuff deleted ...]
> Regarding Q/C and MIX-C: unless my memory is completely faulty, *both*
> of these compilers *are* (or were) Small-C, but greatly extended. I'm
> absolutely certain Q/C is (which is why it's so cheap and why source
> is released). Both of them have been extended at least as far as
> structs/unions, but not floating point (I think). I would imagine that
> they don't optimize much either.
Q/C has an optional MATHPAK which extends the spec to include floating point.
It does handle structures, but not unions (I think), and definately not bit
fields.
MIX is a full blown - K&R C, structs, unions, floating point - the whole
shebang. It is not a fast compiler, nor does it produce very tight code,
but it is far and away the cheapest full C compiler on the market.
[more editing...]
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