power c

[Mark W. Schumann]

In article <6266 at hub.ucsb.edu> 6500chng at ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (B. N. Cheng) writes:
>Anyone heard of powerC by MIX software ?
>I 'd like to know if there's any known bugs or deficiencies. 

Have I heard of it?  Only all day today trying to get through to
tech support!  You should probably avoid this product unless you
want to write some fairly simple programs that won't tax the
compiler's abilities.

I have had some problems with their new version 2.0.0, in the
code optimizer phase.  It gave me today an error for "Long Jump"
and their tech support people could not tell me exactly why it
happened (something to do with array bounds!), how to fix it,
or at least how to rewrite my code to work around it.  Even
though this was in the optimization phase, I couldn't use the
compiled object file because the optimization step cannot be
excluded as with some other compilers.

Finally, be aware that the object code produced by Power C
is in a proprietary format with an .MIX extension.  You can't
convert a .MIX file to an .OBJ without reverse engineering the
format; but you can convert some .OBJ files to .MIX format with
their MIX utility included.  I say "some" because they also cannot
explain why I keep getting an error message from MIX that says
it "Cannot process threads."  I asked Mix Software what a
thread was and why it can't be processed--no intelligble reply
other than "MASM doesn't make threads.  Use MASM."  So you can't
use a reasonably priced assembler to write drivers or error 
handlers either.

Hey, if you need something for quick and dirty C programming
that doesn't involve arrays of function pointers (another problem)
or mixed-language work, go for it.  It's great for the $25.  But
for real-life production work, get Turbo--not that much more
considering the whole environment (including debugger) that comes
with the Turbo C++ Professional package.


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Mark W. Schumann  3111 Mapledale Avenue, Cleveland 44109 USA
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