🚀 go-pugleaf

Scott,

DON'T GET OXFORD PASCAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Ahem) Good 'ol oxford ties into the basic rom for virtually everything
it does, meaning it's no faster than basic...add to that bugs, bugs, and
more bugs, a 2.5 minute load time (which crashes if any 'fast-load'
system is in use), and the standard dorky pascal i/o (try doing disk
drive commands which require writing, then reading, the command channel)
and you get a compiler that will make that ol' basic rom look pretty good...

Ken the H

> 
> I would like to here from people who own and use their c64 with
> a C compiler that is readily available.
> Abacus? Proline? others...?
> A really good Pascal with lots of low-level tie-ins would also do.
> Kyan? SuperPascal? Oxford? others...?
> 
> The compiler of choice would be one that could handle the standard,
> and is easy to use - no disk swapping every minute, etc.
> 
> If you really have a solid opinion, and feel others should here it,
> please post it.  Let's find out what's good for the c64.
> Who has put the RIGHT STUFF into there compiler??????
> 
> Scott McPhee

I'd recommend Proline's C*Power compiler as the best compiler of any kind
I've seen for the C64.  It's a full K&R C, except for bit-fields.  It has
some C64 extensions, and a pretty good machine language interface.  It
has a very good linker that handles multiple object files.  And the 
linker is interactive, you specify files until it can resolve all of the
external references; it won't immediately bomb out if you forget and 
object file or two.  The compiler comes with a shell program that will
properly support two drives.  Comes with a good screen editor too.  And
Proline maintains a BBS in Canada for product support that's also full
of lots of freely copyable software written in C.  The linker can produce
code that runs under the shell or code located at any absolute memory
address (i.e. you should be able to produce ROMable code with this
compiler).  Its also VERY fast.  A few benchmarks I ran on it put it
around twice the speed of PROMAL (another C64 language, kind of like
a simplified C language), and about 10-20 times the speed of Oxford
PASCAL.

-- 
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Dave Haynie	{caip,ihnp4,allegra,seismo}!cbmvax!daveh

	"Laws to supress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit.
	 This is the fine point on which all the legal professions of
	 history have based their job security."
						-Bene Gesserit Coda

These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they may be yours too.

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