Re: ORCA/C is a horrible compiler

[dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <1uotd0$qsi@altitude.HIP.CAM.ORG> vandry@CAM.ORG (Phillip Vandry) writes:
> 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.

ORCA/C 2.0.1 is in beta testing, I believe.  I don't know when it will
be released.  The current release version is 2.0.0, which I have, but
I'm still using 1.3 because 2.0 is far too buggy for my taste.

> ...
> 
> 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.

News to me.  Anything like a syntax error tends to cause a vast number
of error messages to be generated.

It sounds like you might have a configuration problem.  The compiler
should print "ORCA/C 2.0.0" when it starts up, and list out the names
of each function as it compiles, along with any error messages.

If you're familiar with Pascal, then C does no checking for things
like range errors (you can declare a 100 element array, explicitly
access element 200 and the compiler will not complain), but your
program must be syntactically correct, variables must be defined before
they're referenced, etc.

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

I suspect your problem is with GNO and the original ORCA shell.

ORCA/C 2.0 will not work properly if you are running ORCA/Shell 1.x,
and neither will programs compiled using it.  You must use ORCA/Shell
2.0 or 2.0.1 (which is included with ORCA/C 2.0).

I don't know about GNO, but I suspect there is a similar problem with
old versions.

> 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...

There is a "progress" option, which is on by default.  +p enables
progress information, -p disables it.
-- 
David Empson                                                               
dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz                                                
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand