Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!grads.cs.ubc.ca!horsch
From: horsch@grads.cs.ubc.ca (Michael Horsch)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Laser C bugs
Summary: Yeah, but it ain't THAT bad...
Message-ID: <5269@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: 14 Oct 89 08:43:52 GMT
References: <8044@microsoft.UUCP>
Reply-To: horsch@grads.cs.ubc.ca (Michael Horsch)
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 69

In article <8044@microsoft.UUCP> w-darekm@microsoft.UUCP (Darek Mihocka) writes:
 
[some gripes about Laser C... The ones I am addressing are not
 edited out (how's that for being contrapositive!)]

>          The C code generation has some problems when you get
>pointers to structures containing pointers, etc.

	I have never had this one, and I've been messing
	around a lot with objects, and structures which
	contain pointers to objects, and linked lists of 
	trees whose nodes point to objects, and... 
 
>                                                 What also irritates
>me is that if you have a string constant and you forget to put in the
>closing quotation marks, it crashes.

	Not this either. I always forget to close qoutes. Sometimes
	I forget the difference between " and '. I only get
	compiler errors.

>                                     All of these bugs have been present
>since Megamax C, I keep reporting them, and they keep ignoring them or
>telling me they're fixed. That's pissing me off to no end, because otherwise
>I like the package a lot.

	Keep reporting them. I would too, if I found any. But mostly
	I find my own bugs. No implication implied.

>
>The disk cache tends to mess up when you are low on RAM and compiling a
>large program (i.e. more than one module or more than a "hello world"
>skeleton).

	I assume the parenthetical remark to be slightly sarcastic, but
	your argument about low RAM behaviour makes sense to me (I
	have a Mega2, so this is never a problem). I agree
	with an earlier posting in which you suggested that
	the cache be optional. 

>Sure the cache is great if you're compiling off floppy, but you're not going
>to develop a large project on floppy.

	Why not? The disk cache and RAM resident tools make this
	completely reasonable. A little painful at the start of
	a programming session (and after unrecoverable errors),
	for sure, but certainly not completely unthinkable. 
	Especially for those (i.e. me) who (perhaps) misguidedly 
	purchased a machine with more RAM instead of a hard disk.

	I am not a real C programmer, that is, I don't spend months
	working on real projects (in fact, I'm a Prolog hacker
	`by trade' :-) and my Mega2 is somewhat ignobly
	reduced to a real slow terminal for most of its use)
	so I consider one-floppy development adequate for my
	medium sized hacks ---but only with the cache, etc.
>
>- Darek

Mike ("By trade?" --Well, it beats working for a living!)
--
Michael C. Horsch       Disclaimer: I'm not thinking for anyone else but
horsch@cs.ubc.ca                    me; I'm having enough trouble as it is!

Dept. of Computer Science
University of British Columbia
--
If you don't waste time with your friends, you're just wasting your time.
--