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From: hsgj@batcomputer.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Portable "C" Code
Message-ID: <659@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: Fri, 10-Apr-87 20:45:58 EST
Article-I.D.: batcompu.659
Posted: Fri Apr 10 20:45:58 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Apr-87 00:39:07 EST
References: <8704071939.AA09157@cory.Berkeley.EDU> <1102@rpics.RPI.EDU>
Reply-To: hsgj@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu.UUCP (Dan Green)
Organization: Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 34

In article <1102@rpics.RPI.EDU> guilford@rpics.RPI.EDU (Jim Guilford) writes:
>I've read several articles dealing with the incompatibilities between
>lattice and manx C-compilers. This may be a naive question, but why is there
>such an incompatibility? Isn't the purpose of a High-Level-Language to avoid
>such problems. [...good stuff...]
>I would think that people writing in C, using the starndard RKM routines
>would produce portable code. Is it really that difficult?
>
>--Jim Guilford
>(guilford@csv.rpi.edu)

I have never used Amiga Manx so this is written from a Lattice perspective.
I think a lot of compatibliity problems are (aside from RKM calling
conventions) the difference in the "standard" stdio packages on both
compilers.  I know that I just finished a routine that had to generate
-true- random numbers.  On every 4.2BSD cc I have used (under vax750,
gould,sequent) the function is called "random()" and it returns an integer
from 0 to MAXINT.  In Lattice C, a similar function is called "lrand48()"
and does the same thing but returns from 0 to MAXLONG.  Why the name
change?  Lattice also didn't like the way some of the string routines
were named and called some funny names, like "stccpy" for "strcpy".  Before
anyone flames, yes they do have a #define strcpy stccpy automatically so
you can still use strcpy.  Speaking of that, I believe someone said
that Manx has the "index" function, while Lattice uses "stptok" to
search for a substring.  Who is standard?  I don't know.  But anyways,
if your code relies on a lot of these idiosyncratically named functions,
then it probably won't port.
	Note that these are easy to fix with #ifdefs and #defines, but
only if you know that the problems exist.  One last comment:  Please
notice that I have avoided compiler wars.  Cash rewards accepted...
-- Dan Green
-- 
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