Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!walt.cc.utexas.edu!pmaniac
From: pmaniac@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Noah Friedman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Recommend a C compiler?
Summary: high personal praise for Turbo C
Message-ID: <17200@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 16 Aug 89 20:28:05 GMT
References: <660054@hpclwjm.HP.COM>
Sender: news@ut-emx.UUCP
Reply-To: pmaniac@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Noah Friedman)
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
Lines: 30

In article <660054@hpclwjm.HP.COM> walter@hpclwjm.HP.COM (Walter Murray) writes:
>I know C but am a total novice in the world of PC compatibles.
>Which compiler should I buy for my home use?  I want good quality,
>a commitment to ANSI C, responsiveness in fixing bugs, and good
>documentation.  I expect to be doing a variety of applications,
>including graphics.

My personal favorite is Turbo C ( (c) Borland International). It
follows the ANSI C standard, but the compiler directives can be
modified so that it'll handle the more lax format of UNIX C. Also, I
believe Borland makes the only compiler with an "integrated
environment", which really makes it handy to debug & run programs. 

My only criticism of the Turbo C library are the graphics functions,
however. Borland didn't include any graphics at all with the first
version, but by version 1.5 included a set of routines that did all
sorts of crazy things with memory allocation & so forth. I got fed up
with it and wrote my own graphics library. 

Turbo C seems to be the fastest compiler available for the IBM,
though. Documentation is fair (library functions are documented in K&R
format). Succesive versions seem to have fewer bugs & optimize a bit
more, and version 2.0 has an in-line source debugger.

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pmaniac@walt.cc.utexas.edu.UUCP (Noah Friedman)

Any opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own and are not
representative of any official organization, including UT Austin.
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