rp0q+@andrew.cmu.edu (Roger Preisendefer, III) (11/27/87)
I have had Power C for a while, running on both a Commodore 64 and a 128 (2 1541's, no memory expansion) and found it to be a wonderful programming environment. On the 128, you can set up a pair of RAM disks, even without the memory expander. It has a simple shell operating environment, which allows input and output to be redirected as in a Unix shell. You can compile your programs to run under this shell, or to run in basic, or as 100% machine language compiled to run at a specific location! It is 99.9% percent compatible with Kernighan and Richie C, and can call machine language for routines that would be more efficient in hand written ML. It comes with a decent multi-buffer editor, an optimizer, a linker (you can compile routines separately and link them together, or even create routine libraries), a group of demo programs (a print formatter, grep, and a word counter, as well as a graphics demo), and even a terminal program! They also have a 24 hour bboard (300/1200 baud) which has updates as soon as they come out, and which offers public domain programs written in C for the compiler, and a help line is you get stuck! I would recommend this C compiler without reservation! My experience with the Abacus C compiler is secondhand, but also worth relaying. A group of students here were writing a program for a project on the 64 in C (I have no idea why), and were trying to use the Abacus C compiler. They ran into bug problems (in the scanf routine) which they couldn't get around. They called the company, and were finally told that the problem was definitely a bug in the compiler. They finally switched to Power C to finish the project. I'm sure this is somewhat biased, but I hope it helps... Roger Preisendefer Carnegie Mellon U.