At 10:55 PM 12/02/1997 -0800, you wrote:
>Tjaart van der Walt sharpened his pencil and wrote:
>
>>I don't think I should start on MPLAB bugs, lest the PIClisters get a
>>tear
>>or two in their eyes ;)
>>
>>Hey, Microchip! Yoohoo! Hallooooo!
>>
>>--
>
>I've been afraid to even take the shrink wrap off of my Microchip C compiler.
>
>Of all the C compilers out there, do any of them support the 17CXX parts,
>even the 17C756?

Just another reason for changing to MPC.  17C42 is supported.
>
>Do any of the existing compilers support the good stuff:  arrays of
>structures, pointers to functions, and so on, or is it sort of hit and miss?

Some of it is hit and miss.  Think about it though;  the underlying machine
your compiling code for.  The C language implimented for a PIC as you get it
is nowhere near real C and can't ever be that.  True,  an implimentation
using pseudo heaps and stacks is possible for passing huge arrays and lots
of local variables but then you still only have a few bytes of RAM
available.  No complete implimentation of an HLL like C can run with so
little code and data space.  That was one of the first things I had to
re-orient myself to.  I wasn't writing in C I was writing in a simple
Algorithmic language that had much of the syntax of C.  Only then did I
become more productive and have fewer problems.

For example,  It's just not worth passing parameters to functions in most
cases.  The two byte size parameters are immediately placed into the W and
the FSR, then your function is called and then inside your function put into
the local RAM storage.  Except you can't overlay that RAM with any other
locals so it's gone forever.  Takes less code to just set the parameters
into overlayed locals yourself and then call the function ala assembler.
Not as neat but takes less space.

Cheers,

John
Pioneers are the ones, face down in the mud,
with arrows in their backs.
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