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From: Richard Kanarek <rkanarek AT sprintmail DOT com>
To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: compilers under dos?
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 13:29:25 -0500
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Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com

Howdy.

It would have been helpful had you stated what sort of compiler you
were looking for. I shall assume that you are looking for a C
compiler, but, if I'm wrong, do repost.

Caution: All of the following is based upon distant memory. I freely
admit the possibility of error.

Your choices are as follows:
1) Turbo C 2.01 by Borland. Arguably the best overall C compiler ever.
It comes with both an IDE which facilitates creating, editing,
linking, & source level debugging C modules. The IDE is text mode and
supports some WordStar commands. If you don't like or can't use the
IDE, command line versions of the compiler & linker are also included.
The compiler is all but bug free. Its only problem is that is a little
too zealous in trying to keep the output code size small. Its zeal
takes the form of leaving out the floating point library, even if your
program needs it, unless the need is unambiguous. The fix is to simply
stick an unambiguous floating point function call into your program,
should it suffer from the problem.
There were also a few patches released for the library functions;
you'd probably want to get them as well if you get the Turbo C 2.01
package.
Note: While I believe that TC 2.01 is available free from Borland's
online "museum", I don't believe that they include the patches nor,
even more importantly, the excellent documentation.
Aside: You can tell I'm old by the fact that I can recall when Borland
had excellent documentation!

2) Watcom C/C++ is now available for free (see
http://www.openwatcom.org/). Watcom C/C++ was, I believe, considered
the industrial grade compiler. It supports a few different operating
system (win 16, win 32, Dos, QNX) and comes with command line versions
of everything (good thing, too, as I don't believe its IDE is well
regarded).

3) Power C, from Mix Software
(http://www.mixsoftware.com/product/powerc.htm) is still available.
About a decade ago, Power C (which has changed little) was TC 2.01's
only rival for C supremacy. While I'm disappointed by Mix Software's
customer disinterest (they won't document their proprietary file
formats nor will they sell or make available the CP/M version of their
compiler), all of their software products are, AFAIK, of extremely
high quality and I have, on one occasion, used the documentation for
one of their programs () in lieu of a text book for college level
study.
If I recall correctly comparisons made at the time, Power C was, in
some ways, even better than Borland when it came to actually
compiling.


Cordially,
Richard Kanarek