Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!ames!amdahl!pyramid!uccba!hal!ncoast!allbery From: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Are binary groups necessary? Message-ID: <3678@ncoast.UUCP> Date: Tue, 28-Jul-87 23:48:51 EDT Article-I.D.: ncoast.3678 Posted: Tue Jul 28 23:48:51 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 1-Aug-87 09:26:56 EDT References: <266@brandx.rutgers.edu> <8225@utzoo.UUCP> <272@brandx.rutgers.edu> <153@hobbes.UUCP> <304@brandx.rutgers.edu> Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) Followup-To: news.admin Distribution: na Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, Oh Lines: 40 As quoted from <304@brandx.rutgers.edu> by webber@brandx.rutgers.edu.UUCP: +--------------- | Don't know about larn in particular, but there is no reason for micro | compilers to be extra slow. I assume this is mostly because of too much | file i/o (i.e., using mainframe design strategies -- the biggest difference +--------------- WRONG. You expect a PC/AT to compile stuff as fast as a Sun, you got your head on wrong. 80x86 DOES NOT RUN AS FAST AS 680x0 (maybe 80386 does now)! Playing games with I/O won't help. Playing games with ALGORITHMS (a' la Turbo C) does help, but is non-trivial in the extreme and NOT doable by 99% of the micro users out there who use comp.binaries.all. +--------------- | > And let's not forget bells like correct code generation, correct dynamic | > memory management, correct pointer arithmatic, and of cource, correct | > (ANSI) language implementation. | | Correct pointer arithmetic (and correct code generation in general) is | certainly necessary in C. ... ANSI | C is needlessly complicated, I will stick to Kernighan and Ritchie, thank | you (but you will be welcome to extend/modify the compiler if you want). +--------------- Two big wrongs here. (1) "Correct pointer arithmetic" is far hairier than you think. What would you compute the number of bytes between 401F:0002 and 402F:0002 to be? Wrong: it's _16_ bytes. Pointer normalization is the reason why there's no such thing as a working large-(huge-)model C compiler for the 80x86. (2) ANSI C: "needlessly complicated"??? ANSI C is taking into account the fact that C needs to be extended in order to do real-world jobs in a reason- able way. As well say that K&R C is too complicated, because we can do it all in assembler. -- Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc and comp.binaries.ibm.pc {{harvard,mit-eddie}!necntc,well!hoptoad,sun!cwruecmp!hal}!ncoast!allbery ARPA: necntc!ncoast!allbery@harvard.harvard.edu Fido: 157/502 MCI: BALLBERY <>