Date   : Wed, 20 Aug 1986 19:05:31 GMT
From   : Jon Mandrell <jon%amc.uucp@BRL.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Looking for a good C compiler

In article <687@ethos.UUCP> jay@ethos.UUCP (Jay Denebeim) writes:
>
>   Depends on what you concider cheap.  Ecosoft C is $49.95.  I like it
>alot, but it's HUGE.  I've used bother BDS and Ecosoft, BDS is very fast, and
>comes with alot of goodies, but is terribly non-K&R.  Ecosoft is standard,
>cheap, and has a good library, but it's slow and the modules have to be very
>small to compile under it.
>

I think you are talking about the PC based version.  I purchased ECO-C for
my system and payed $300, along with a high-speed assembler and linker.
I have used it for quite awhile, and I like it.

Some disadvantages:
1) Comments nest.  Some people like this, but it causes problems when I
   want to port code from UNIX, and someone has commented out a line
   like this:
     /* x=2;   /* set x to 2 */
2) It is slow, but that is fairly well made up for by the assembler
   package.
3) It is missing the fread() and fwrite() routines.  They aren't hard
   to write, but it is a bother.
4) A bug:  if you reference off of a pointer using a negative subscript,
   it will crash the compiler.  that is 'x=ptr[-1];'  instead, I use
   'x= *(ptr-1);', which works just fine.

Some advantages:
1) The assembler they provide with it (SLR, at extra cost) is FAST.  They
   say it will manage six times the speed of M80, and it's true.  To those
   people out there still living with M80 and L80, I highly recommend
   changing over.
2) When the compiler gives error messages, they are good, with multiple
   lines of text, and even referencing a page number in the C book that
   comes along with it.
3) It is complete, with all data types supported, nested structures, unions,
   and all of the other little beasties that you want.
4) It provides routines to access the I/O ports, so you don't need to write
   assembly language routines to do this.
5) The manual is good.  They completely cover all of the function library,
   as well as all of the switches.
6) The provide the math functions.
7) You can get source to the libraries (send them floppies and $10).

I have not seen the problem with large modules mentioned, since I have taken
stuff right off of the net, and compiled it.  It does sometimes barf on
switch statements that contain more than about 128(?) cases.

Disclaimer: Just a happy customer.

-- 
Jon Mandrell    (ihnp4!uw-beaver!tikal!amc!jon)
Applied Microsystems Corp.

"flames >& /dev/null" - me