Hello,


I've used MPC for a couple projects, and it works fine (but not
without a few quirks --

Has anyone experienced incorrect compilations
with byte craft's MPC? i.e.,  the code has
compiled without errors but the object code
doesn't agree with the source?

A few months ago I was looking at C compilers for
the PIC and tried MPC 1.56 and 2.07... I didn't
think that 1.56 would produce tight enough code for
our application (we give our '73s a lot to do) and
I had no confidence in 2.07 after it miscompiled a
logical AND statement in a do...while loop. I can't
find the C code, but the behaviour should be that
'a AND b' would fail if 'a' was 0 (i.e., if the
first arg is zero, the test will fail, so don't
bother performing the AND). 2.07 compiled this
so that if a = 0, the test would evaluate to true
rather than false.


I also looked at CC5x (despite its name, it supports
the 16Cxx family) which produces very tight code, but
unlike Byte Craft's compilers, it's difficult to
follow the object code. Also, it's not a full
implementation of C (it was designed specifically for
the pic, hence the C implementation is based upon the
pic instruction set) and is limited to 8-bit maths.
If I were to use a C compiler for the pic, I'd
probably use a byte craft compiler (but not 2.07!!).


- Andy.


Andy David
Software Engineer
Ultronics Division,
Ultra Hydraulics