Clyde Smith-Stubbs <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU> wrote:

> There are two problems with [trying to judge a compiler against a
> subjective "real" or "full" C standard rather than against the
> ANSI standard] - firstly you're having a bet each way - if you are
> judging the compiler by its usefulness for typical PIC
> applications, then issues like recursion and pointers to bits are
> irrelevant (you concede yourself that you have no use for
> recursion, and I seriously doubt you ever even considered using a
> pointer to a bit in an assembler program).

    Clyde:

    Actually, I use the machine-language equivalent of pointers to
    bits often enough that I've written a whole set of MPASM macros
    to handle them.

> The other problem is, as you said, everyone might have their own
> ideas about what they want in a compiler.

    Happily conceded.  However, I think we can all agree that a
    compiler should be able to handle negative numbers, that if it
    understands pointers AND 16-bit variables it should also
    understand pointers TO 16-bit variables, and that it should be
    able to perform basic type conversions between 8-bit and 16-bit
    variables.

> given minor extensions, ANSI C can do an excellent job on low-end
> microcontrollers, with a good optimizing compiler. And using a
> standard language allows you to use such features as long or float
> arithmetic if you need them (but suffer no cost if you don't).
>
> The huge benefit of using an ANSI compiler on a PIC is not so much
> portability of code (which is important, but less so than on larger
> processors) but portability of people, i.e. programmers.

    I couldn't agree more.  In fact, the answer to Question #12,
    "What are the relative merits of C versus Assembly-Language for
    microcontroller programming?" (in the "Miscellaneous" section of
    the "Answers" area on my company's web page) includes the
    following:

        If you spend your whole life honing your assembly-language
        skills, you won't be nearly as employable as any of the
        hundreds of thousands of C programmers out there. While C
        PROGRAMS aren't always portable from one processor to
        another, C PROGRAMMERS are.

> For the record, I think using "short" for a bit variable, and "long"
> for a 16 bit is a Bad Idea, as is Bytecraft's thing.0 notation for
> bit access.

    For the record, I agree wholeheartedly.

    -Andy

    P.S.  As usual... Just my opinion; I could be wrong.

Andrew Warren - fastfwd@ix.netcom.com
Fast Forward Engineering, Vista, California
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/2499