C compilers for 8 bit machines

Rick N. Fincher ranger at ecsvax.UUCP
Fri Sep 5 23:54:03 AEST 1986


> I would appreciate any references to C compilers for popular 8 bit
> machines, such as the Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari 800, and CP/M machines.
> I'd prefer products, but public domain offerings are OK too, especially
> if a source can be given.

Aztec C runs on the Apple, CP/M systems and the C64.  Its different
versions seem to be very compatible at the source code level and a 
Unix-style user interface makes the various versions very similar in
operation.
 
> 
> This info is for a book about C portability, so you probably don't want
> to offer to send a copy of Tiny C personally.  Also, any comments about
> the compiler you mention (if you like it, what it's limits are, etc)
> would be appreciated.
> 
The Aztec compiler for the Apple has very slow screen handling because
it uses a console driver that emulates a terminal.  Terminal screen
control codes are decoded into control codes for the particular hardware
being used.  This is great for portability but is very slow.
The other gripe I have with Aztec C on the Apple concerns float and d 
double data types.  The Aztec systems comes with two compilers, one
that compiles into compact pseudo code (nice for 8 bit machines) and 
one that compiles into fast but long native code.  The problem is that the fast         
the fast native code compiler does not support float or double.  This
makes operations using these types fairly slow.  Fortunately, the 
linker that comes with the system will link modules compiled with either
compiler, so you are not forced to compile everything in pseudo code.



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