Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!gatech!udel!rochester!rit!ultb!adw3345
From: adw3345@ultb.UUCP (A.D. Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: ANSI C
Message-ID: <1399@ultb.UUCP>
Date: 10 Oct 89 02:55:45 GMT
References: <1267@sdcc13.ucsd.EDU> <1156@mrsvr.UUCP>
Reply-To: adw3345@ultb.UUCP (A.D. Williams)
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology, Information Systems
Lines: 29


 Someone asked if MWC was worth buying although it is not ANSI and ANSI
C is sure to be passed in the future.
 The big point about ANSI C is that one compiler will run on another
compiler with no changes in libraries, etc. ANSI helps clear up the
points K & R were vague about and hence a cause for differences between
compilers.
 Now the way I see it is that MWC follows the ANSI C standard in spirit
(I.e., Structures can be passed as a parameter rather than a pointer),
and unless your code is going to have a wide distribution over different
machines, you won't *absolutely* need ANSI.
 I have been using MWC for about 2 years, and I have learned a lot about
C as well as the Atari ST. I use it for my own purposes, and it is rare
that I need to compile it on a different machine, as I use MWC for many
Atari-specific programs. I think people holding their breath for ANSI
are thinking "If I only had ANSI, I will be able to do *anything!*".
That's what I felt like before I started writing "serious" code (i.e.,
big programs that did something useful, etc.). First I thought I
*needed* a hard drive before I could get anything done, then I *needed*
a time chip (for Make), before I realized I didn't actually need them to
write a "Hello World" program.
 You may actually need an ANSI compiler (Prospro provides one), but I
think the vast majority of would-be Atari Programmers will do well to
get MWC (or any other compiler), even if it doesn't have ANSI.

                                                         Derrick

.sig under construction.