Lattice versus CI86

[km at cadre.UUCP]

Your comments are well taken. C86 certainly has its share of faults.
My major point was that I had an easier time living with them than
using the early version of Lattice, and that access to the library
sources was helpful.

My own two major gripes with C86 are the "extern" problem, which
does NOT exist with Lattice when the "-x" flag is used, and the
inability to use common member names in different structures with
differing offsets, which also does not exist with Lattice.

I have not had access to the "large" version of Lattice and cannot
comment on the relative speed sacrifices with (uugh) "long" 8086
pointers. I have noticed a pronounced speed degradation with the
long pointers in C86, particularly in code containing a lot of
arrays.

In summary, I did not mean to unilaterally "praise" C86 but to simply
comment on my own experience, admittedly with compilers of quite
different currentness. I would very much like to see the DeSmet
compiler, and others.