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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 22:39:09 -0500
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Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com

Greetings.

I'm replying to a reply, by Mr. Belousov, to my recent post, which
listed three good C compilers for DOS (Turbo C 2.01 by Borland, Power
C by www.mixsoftware.com, and Watcom C/C++). I won't quote the author
directly, as his English is -- like mine -- somewhat wanting. I will,
however, attempt to respond to the points he raised.

Turbo C 2.01 is, AFAIK, the best C compiler package ever released for
DOS. It's true that it is not best at everything, but it is good at
everything & has fewer weaknesses. My statement calling Turbo C all
but bug free might sound dubious to someone not familiar with early
Borland, but, once upon a time, Borland was synonymous with excellent
software and documentation. Really. Ask any old person with a good
memory. <g> It was only when they started pushing C++ that, IMHO,
quality dropped.

Mr. Belousov also mentioned that the complete Watcom C/C++ package was
not yet available free (from http://www.openwatcom.org/ ); that only
the upgrade for Watcom C/C++ ver. 11.B to 11.C is available. I must
confess to knowing nothing about this (I purchased Watcom C/C++ v11.b
-- although I haven't really used it yet -- so its free to me. <g>)

Addendum: Although I have absolutely no experience with it, there is
also a C/C++ compiler package, Digital Mars (formerly Zortech C++),
available from http://www.digitalmars.com/. Note that, although the
package can produce DOS & DOS 32 executables, the package only runs
under Win32.


Cordially,
Richard Kanarek