Decus C

[James B. VanBokkelen]

DECUS C does not 'require' floating point hardware unless you're
actually using floats and doubles.  I've used it for years on an 11/44
with no FPP. I don't think it uses FPP hardware to compile programs
with floating point in use, only to run them.  There are also options
to allow the compiler and library to run without the SXT instruction
(e.g. on an 11/05).  Don't believe the comment in the documentation
that says that the compiler has hooks to generate FPP instructions, as
they were apparently all removed. 

In general, it is a fine (but limited, lacking many modern features)
compiler for the PDP-11, and its library and accompanying utility
programs are pretty good too. However, since the compiler and all the
I/O library are MACRO-11, it is going to be tough to maintain unless
you are somewhat conversant with assembly.  It doesn't have structure
assignments or returns, or variable definition on block boundaries,
and I have no idea how difficult this sort of thing would be to add.

There are some bugs in the I/O library in the newest distribution I
had, my fixes for which have been posted to _The Heap_, the newsletter
put out by the DECUS Structured Languages SIG.  They should be
essentially type-in fixes (output from the 'diff' utility provided).
Get the back issues from '83, '84 and '85, because I think that SIG
has been somewhat overrun by the VAX/Ada people, and noone is updating
the distribution of the compiler.

jbvb at ai.ai.mit.edu

"What would you do if the label came off?"