Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!ucdavis!deneb.ucdavis.edu!cck
From: cck@deneb.ucdavis.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: What about the Turbo C compiler?
Keywords: BSD compatible, IO library
Message-ID: <2637@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Date: 5 Aug 88 23:28:08 GMT
References: <371@gt-eedsp.UUCP>
Sender: uucp@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu
Reply-To: cck@deneb.ucdavis.edu.UUCP (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Organization: University of California, Davis
Lines: 39

In article <371@gt-eedsp.UUCP> drabik@gt-eedsp.UUCP (Timothy J. Drabik) writes:
>
>I'm looking for a C compiler for a PC XT that will allow me to write
>software that runs both on the PC (MSDOS) and on 4.2 BSD on a 780,

>reasonably priced.  Would some Turbo C users please comment on the
>merits or flaws in this compiler?

I do what you describe plus compile for several Xenix systems, ULTRIX,
and 2.9 BSD. I have three C compilers: the Xenix (Microsoft) cross
compiler, MSC, and TurboC.

I gave up on MSC (Quick C) under MSDOS. The interface is bad, you can
only use the middle memory model (for the debug environment), and the
system of handling libraries is intolerable.

TurboC (1.0) has many bugs, some in fundamental areas. You say you want
floating point arithmetic that works? What are you, some kind of
communist?

I've never succeeded in getting anything but the most trivial programs
to work using large and huge memory models, and turning on stack probes
causes programs to run out of memory very rapidly.

The documentation has many errors in terms of allegedly equivalent
UNIX/MSDOS calls and some things are especially stupid, the signal
(actually ssignal under TURBOC) handling, for example. Watch out for
**IX code that calls ioctl; turboc has one unrelated to the **IX
version.

With enough #ifdef statements, you can get things to work, however, and
unless you like rodents, the interface is more congenial. Combine
TurboC with the MKS Toolkit, put the basic programs and includes on ram
disk, and you'll probably not mis a debugger since you can
compile/relink so fast.

On the other hand, the Quick C (MSC) includes and functions are overall
more **IX compatible, and if you are going to use it in a command line
environment, you can avoid the dumb interface and its diddling with the
video (not good for my ATT 6310).