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From: tony@brillig.umd.edu (Tony Feldmesser)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Turbo C 2.0 advice wanted...
Message-ID: <14086@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 20 Oct 88 17:13:30 GMT
References: <17144@vax5.CCS.CORNELL.EDU>
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Reply-To: tony@brillig.umd.edu.UUCP (Tony Feldmesser)
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Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science,
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In article <17144@vax5.CCS.CORNELL.EDU> soxy@vax5.ccs.cornell.edu Chris Eykamp
writes:
>I am very seriously thinking of purchasing TC 2.0, and I am a bit confused 
>about the differences between the expensive package and the cheaper one.
>I know the expensive one has a standalone debugger and TASM.  I am interested
>in programming as a hobby, not a proffesional career.  I want to use inline
>Assembler, and am willing to buy the expensive version if I need to...  Is
>there any reason to, is what I am asking...

  If you plan on doing any inline assembly, you need the expensive
(professional) package.  Whenever the compiler encounters an 'asm' keyword in
a C source file, it generates .asm file rather then an object or executable
(like the -S option to tcc).  It then invokes 'TASM' passing it the .asm
file it just generated.  If you own MASM already, you could rename it to
TASM, but I'm not sure if the command line options are the same.

  There is also a new 'function' _EMIT_, which allows you to insert a
sequence of bytes directly into the .obj file, but I don't think you want to
deal with generating 80x86 instructions by hand.

  For what its worth, I upgraded to the professional package.  I don't think
it's hit the shelves yet, but when it does, I doubt it will be for $250.
I'd guess more like $150 - $200.  I think its worth it--you get some great
programming tools.  The new environment compiles faster then the old one,
and has the built-in debugger.  TCC shows similar improvments.  TASM is an
excellent assembler.  Even if you only program as a hobby, you'll want to
get into assembly sooner or later :).  TD, the free-standing debugger, is
the best I've seen when it comes to source-level debuggers.  It allows
multiple windows viewing source/mixed/assembly code, cpu/co-processor
registers, stack traces, and has some powerful watch and conditional
breakpoint abilities.  It really has to be seen in action to be appreciated!
If you do plan on doing even a little inline assembly, you'll want the
debugger for its ability to view/modify the CPU registers; something the
integrated environment doesn't allow (not directly at least; you can reference
the pseudo-registers '_AX', etc).  Overall, like I said, it *IS* worth it.

					Tony


Disclaimer: "Me work for Borland?  Naaaaa!  I am but a humble student, and
these are but my humble opinions."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tony Feldmesser                        | tony@brillig.umd.edu
University of Maryland at College Park | ...!mimsy!tony
Department of Computer Science         | (301) 454-8114
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