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From: kkaempf@rmi.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Lattice-C 4.0, undocumented features
Message-ID: <789@rmi.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Oct-87 10:05:16 EST
Article-I.D.: rmi.789
Posted: Fri Oct 30 10:05:16 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 3-Nov-87 02:09:02 EST
Reply-To: kkaempf@rmi.UUCP (Klaus Kaempf)
Organization: RMI Net, Aachen, W.Germany
Lines: 72

Hi !

The following text comes from a friend of mine, who doesn't
has access to the Net. You may send comments to me via E-Mail,
I will pass them to him.

Klaus Kaempf

- - - - - - - - -

After using my new Lattice C 4.0 (they did a great job!) for
a few days, I found out some things that might be
interesting for others as well:

"-ce" on "LC1" will inhibit output of the source
(de-manxify, same as LC3.10) in case of an error. Warning 96
won't be issued unless you specify "-cf".
"-c+" will suppress warning 22.

"#pragma syscall" uses address 4 as library base pointer.

Using "sizeof(struct unknown)" still will not give you an
error and "-ct" still does not work (both same as LC3.10).
This can be fixed with the following patch:

Change the word at offset $4751 from $2000 to $0000
(otherwise the compiler will override the option you choose)
and the word at offset $4558 from $660A to $670A (so the
compiler will behave unchanged if "-ct" is NOT specified,
see page C-10, NOT 8-3). Both offsets are 16-bit-offsets!
These modifications don't seem to have any side effects, but
who knows?

Now all undefined structs etc. will generate a warning
(after the complete source has been processed, so the line
number should be ignored). But now you will have to fix your
Amiga include files cause these will use lots of pointers to
undefined structs (remember the old 3.03 and its warnings if
you did not include almost everything?).

And now a bit of criticism (John Toebes, are you
listening?): Give us back our address register variables! My
favorite benchmark (a sieve) now runs about 15 secs instead
of 9 secs under LC3.10 for the first million prime numbers
(no output of course). At least offer an option the way
Aztec does (+r) if not using small data (= base relative).
And, by the way, I could not get the compiler to use A3 as
register, only A2, meaning I got only a single address
register left! And if I choose not to use "#pragma
libcall/syscall" it should be possible to use A6 as either a
register variable or the base register (now A4).

In addition you should release documentation on the new
object format (library indexing). You did so in the
"read.me" to LC3.10 for the base relative addressing and
usage of a well documented standard object format has always
been the reason I preferred Lattice to Aztec (both are still
great compilers and if I need "#asm" I use Aztec of course).
The object format defined by MetaComCo had to be enhanced,
but then, please tell us about these improvements.

The preprocessor symbol "LATTICE_C" should be defined the
way Turbo C (gee, what's that?) does it (version number) in
addition to those (now undocumented) symbols (who wrote the
manual?).

And, by the way, "OMD" does not recognize "BCS".

Goodbye for now, I hope this helped someone.

Ralph Babel, Falkenweg 3, D-6204 Taunusstein, West-Germany.
Sorry, no E-mail.