Questions tagged [compilers]
Historical compilers, or modern compilers targeting retro platforms.
77 questions
13votes
1answer
3kviews
Was there ever a C compiler written in Pascal?
When C was gaining popularity across various computer architectures and it was being ported to those architectures, was it always done via cross-compiling, or was there a known case of a C compiler ...
- 21.5k
3votes
1answer
194views
Is there any compiler (either native or cross-compiler) for NEC PC-88?
After searching for the file system for this computer I have gained interest in this machine and development for it. I have found a C compiler but anything else. So basically I would like to ask if ...
- 1,696
6votes
3answers
427views
Are there known attempts to revive Algol-68 on PDP-11?
There was an implementation of Algol-68 on PDP-11, which is present in the form of raw binary files, allegedly from RSX-11M, and UNIX V7 loaders/adapters for them in the form of Assembly language ...
- 21.5k
6votes
0answers
259views
Enumerated types in Pascal: which compilers did I/O of them?
As far as can be seen in ISO 7185:1990, §6.9.1, page 60 read(f,vi,...,v„) shall access the textfile and establish a reference to that textfile for the remaining execution of the statement; each of vi,...
- 21.5k
3votes
0answers
202views
Did any Algol 58 implementation support the “do” facility?
Algol 58 had a do statement that performed a kind of macro substitution. It is described on page 16 in the preliminary report. Even though the language was intentionally drafty and incomplete, various ...
- 3,800
4votes
0answers
239views
When was the /LD MSVC compiler option available and what was it good for? [closed]
I stumbled upon the /LD compiler option in the Microsoft compiler and I wondered why my Visual Studio 2022 doesn't have that option. So I asked this question on StackOverflow, where famous Hans ...
31votes
3answers
19kviews
Why did Borland ignore the Macintosh market?
During the 80s and 90s, Borland developed several amazing, cutting edge developer products. Their Turbo Pascal and Delphi, an Object Pascal development environment, were very popular on DOS and ...
- 692
12votes
2answers
1kviews
Is there a pre-defined compiler macro for legacy Microsoft C 5.10 to get the compiler's name and version number?
In Microsoft Visual C++, I can use the macros _MSC_VER for compiler identification and _MSC_FULL_VER for its version number to retrieve the data of the used compiler at runtime of my C program. But ...
- 1,282
4votes
2answers
238views
How were strings printed in the Dijkstra-Zonneveld ALGOL 60 compiler for the Electrologica X1?
Reading the report on the first Algol 60 compiler in the world, namely the Dijkstra-Zonneveld ALGOL 60 compiler for the Electrologica X1, which contains the Pascal source faithfully reproducing its ...
- 21.5k
19votes
6answers
5kviews
How did the `long` and `short` integer types originate in C?
I was wondering why C has the long and short integer type in addition to the plain int, and came across the following quote in the C99 Rationale (thanks to this answer here): [...] In the 1970s, 16-...
- 551
7votes
0answers
545views
Looking for the name of a natural language Fortran compiler
Back in the 80s I ran across a book at a garage sale titled something like "Programming Fortran In English" or "Programming Fortran In Natural Language" that described a compiler ...
- 71
23votes
3answers
3kviews
Why were OS/360 PL/I procedure calls so expensive in terms of stack space?
In 1977, Guy Steele published a paper entitled Debunking the “expensive procedure call” myth or, procedure call implementations considered harmful or, LAMBDA: The Ultimate GOTO. The paper was the ...
- 332
34votes
11answers
12kviews
Has there ever been a C compiler where using ++i was faster than i++?
Please take a look at this post: Is there a performance difference between i++ and ++i in C? There are two essential statements in the answer: Modern compiler produce the same machine code no matter ...
- 5,460
23votes
2answers
4kviews
Using Clang to compile MS-DOS executables
I have a simple C program, and I would like to compile it targeting MS-DOS. Can this be achieved with Clang? I would like to produce the following formats: COM executable 16-bit MZ executable 32-bit ...
- 802
6votes
5answers
3kviews
Were there cross-compiler online services for the public?
Compiling takes computing power, and to a lesser extent, storage and memory. Back in the 70s and 80s personal computers weren't powerful enough to compile codes in high-level languages or if capable ...
- 3,814
