Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA!jhs From: jhs@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit Subject: C on the Atari. Message-ID: <8705061539.AA23436@mitre-bedford.ARPA> Date: Wed, 6-May-87 11:39:39 EDT Article-I.D.: mitre-be.8705061539.AA23436 Posted: Wed May 6 11:39:39 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 8-May-87 01:02:27 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 52 ****** A T T E N T I O N A-8 D I G E S T E D I T O R *********** ***** OOPS! Bill Westfield Please use this version instead of the one I accidentally sent with half of the Digest hanging on!!! ******* ****************************************************************************** Did I miss the posting of Ace C to the net? I didn't see it go by, but am seeing messages of appreciation. Why, oh why, does my host have to pick the worst possible times to be down? (I know, Murphy's Law, of course.) Could somebody re-post it or mail it to me directly? Thanks! Also, can anybody comment on the following: It appears to me that ACTION! is MANY TIMES faster at compilation than any C compiler around. E.g., my wife, who has used C compilers on WANG's IBM-PC clones, about fell off her chair when she saw how fast ACTION! compiled a 2-page program -- around 0.75 second, as I recall, by the way. Now, it appears to me that ACTION! is a lot like C, and probably a C implemented with the same kind of approach would compile just about as fast. I understand that ACTION! also produces mind bogglingly efficient code. We will all have a chance to see how true this is if I ever finish my C version of uuencode and uudecode and we can compare with the Deep Blue C and BASIC/ML versions that now exist. My question is this: Would it be possible to implement C with ACTION! technology, and would it indeed run as fast and compile as fast as ACTION! does? If so, why doesn't somebody up and do this? (Clint Parker, where are you?!) While I have the floor, let me also ask why in all these years nobody has come up with a standard for "relocatable object code" for the Atari? Usually when I ask people this, they say "it's hard to write relocatable code for a 6502". In my mind, that is the very reason that we NEED a relocatable object code format. This is not an executable format, but one which can easily be relocated to the desired memory segment and the absolute references filled in. What is needed is an assembler which preserves the relocatable versus absolute semantics of its input and marks those values in the output which need to be relocated so that the linker can identify them at link time. So the relocatable intermediate object code format plus the availability of an automatic linker and (hopefully) "librarian" utility, would COMPENSATE FOR the limitations of the 6502 instruction set and let us develop really decent language environments -- all ending up in the same relocatable format. If we could readily develop reusable software libraries, with the performance that languages like ACTION! and MAC65 give, we could greatly reduce the effort involved in developing high-performance application programs on the 8-bitters. By the way, I understand that there is a recently-announced assembler that DOES produce relocatable object code, but unfortunately does not (yet) have macro capabilities. I can't locate the name and address I was given but will post it if I find it. Maybe their format will become the standard! -John Sangster P.S. Thanks to Sascha Segan for his reply about Turbo BASIC for the 800. Also, thanks to Fred Sullivan for his help with the ACTION! Block Read question, and to the several others who also responded privately.