Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi
From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: compilers
Summary: no free compilers
Keywords: Are any available?
Message-ID: <3495@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 27 Jul 88 16:09:00 GMT
References: <11051@cgl.ucsf.EDU>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 24

In article <11051@cgl.ucsf.EDU> alonso@cgl.ucsf.edu (Darwin Alonso%Dill) writes:
>I haven't seen any compilers posted on pc binaries. Are they
>too big, or are there none that are public-domain/share-ware?

The shareware/free software world has no good compilers for programming
languages.  I think one reason for this is that it takes a tremendous
amount of effort to write a good language translator and to provide
support (bug fixes mostly, also enhancements to track programming
languages as they change), and this must be paid for.

Fortunately the MS-DOS world has an abundance of reasonably-
priced language translators.  The main source of these is Borland
(near-ANSI C, near-Microsoft BASIC, near-ISO Pascal, and a
quasi-Prolog).  Don't buy from Borland or from your local bookstore or
computer store.  Independent mail-order suppliers will give you steep
discounts from the list price.

There's a free C compiler, called the GNU C compiler, which currently
runs only on large systems, and is never likely to run on any
8086-based system.  There have also been occasional subsets of various
languages such as Tiny-C and Tiny-Pascal.  There have generally been
quite inadequate for any realistic programming.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi