ORCA/C is a horrible compiler

[vandry@CAM.ORG (Phillip Vandry)]

I vaguely recall discussion about ORCA/C 2.0.1. I may or may not be dreaming.
If I am not, some or all of the following post may not apply to the real
situation.

Also, please set me straight either way. :-)

----

Well, I just got ORCA/C 2.0 last week. The first thing I did is compile a few
programs for which I already had the source code. By doing this, I was able
to see that it is much faster than I had expected. Also, the manual leads me
to believe that this is a very powerful compiler.

Unfortunately my review of the compiler would have to be "horrible". Once I
started writing my own programs, I found out that the compiler outputs no
errors whatsoever.

ORCA/C being my first C compiler, I am far from fluent in C. Therefore I make
mistakes. ORCA/C makes me stare at my source code and guess. Any half decent
compiler gives you error messages and tells you what's wrong while it is
compiling!

The result is that ORCA/C is completely useless to me. I can recompile correct
programs all I want, but what good is that? Unless I write a flawless program
I can't write my own. To write a flawless program I need practice. To get
practice I need a compiler that will compile my programs.

I'm also lucky to have GNO. I discovered that programs generate no output at
all unless _INITGNOSTDIO() is used. Even under ORCA.

Maybe there is a verbose flag? Maybe there is a bug? Or maybe there is 2.0.1?
In any case 2.0 is useless...
 ______________________________________________________________________
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| Phillip Vandry | Vandry@Cam.Org | Suicide (n.): What to do if Macs   |
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