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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

What makes one C compiler better than the other?

What makes C compiler better than the other? Well, that’s a question often debated upon. As we all know c is a general purpose programming language which was developed to run on UNIX operating system and till date it is the most widely used programming language being used to develop programs. it uses a weak compiler as compared to other language compilers.

The C compiler provides low level access to computer memory and offers programming constructs that are very easy to convert to machine level language. C compilers use minimum run time and they are very fats compilers though prone to errors. A C program can easily be converted to another language program with a minimum of rewriting. C compiler allows structured programming and is very flexible. Its static system avoids many of the errors that can happen during run time.
- C allows the executable code to be stored within functions.
- C compiler terminates a statement with a semicolon.
- C is basically a procedure oriented language.

There are many C compilers available in the market today and most them run on all operating systems including both windows and UNIX. Some of these c compilers are available as freeware, some are available under proprietary license, and some have BSD license and some other have GPL license. Many of the c compilers are not available online.

The best about C compilers is that a majority of them support “integrated development environment” or IDE which makes them more easy to use. Some C compilers apart from having IDE supporting feature come with some third party features which extend the functionality of the language and make it work faster. They provide better editing options and strong macros with great compiler integration and run time.

Most of these compilers take only 300 MB of space on your hard disk drive. For windows some are available in the size of 170 MB and so the installation process is not time consuming and does not checks your patience.

C compiler lets you use parallelism. Any source code before execution, needs to be converted into machine level language i.e., in the language that is easily understood by the CPU processor. C compiler does this effectively and very fast as compared to other language compilers available today.

C having a fast compiler is mostly used to write game codes. Since other languages are largely optimized, C is used widely even today. C compiler provides abstraction to a great degree. Compiling depends a lot on the length and complexity of the code and on the speed of the CPU processor. But, the C compiler compiles the required code in as less time as possible. C compiler being a very large and complex tool is very powerful and useful. C can be thought of as a portable assembly language and scripting of many other languages is based on C language only.

Learning all the features of C is a great deal. Many C compilers support all ANSI C standards. C compilers are so small that they can be directly used from a rescue disk. C compilers can produce x86 and x86- 64 code very fast. Many C compilers today come with an optional memory feature and a bound checker.

Few compilers can simultaneously compile and run the programs using the “command line” option. Under this feature programs run like shell scripts. The C compilers are exceptionally faster and better than any other compiler available today in terms of speed of compilation. C language is free of what is called bombastic jargon and it is not much optimized. Most of the C compilers like TCC produce codes in a single pass and each statement is compiled very carefully.


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