Why some PC C compilers are useless

Consider this a plea to all vendors of C for MS-DOS.


Please do _not_ use "text" mode for reading the source! A C compiler
should not care whether a line of source ends in CR,LF or just a LF.


The reverse is true as well - I recall fixing gcc-1.34 to not get upset by
CR's in the source, fortunately I was able to fix it. But in the binary
only MSDOS world I simply have to chose another compiler!


I bought Borland's Turbo C (v1.5) years ago, and liked it. But I had to
abandon it in favour of Microsoft's compiler because while MSC could
handle CR,LF or just LF, Borland's compiler went berserk - reporting lots
of syntax errors etc.


Currently I'm looking for a PC C++ compiler... a colleague at work had
Borland's C++ (v3.0) so I tried compiling my code with it. Lots of
ridiculous errors! Guess what, convert all the source to CR,LF and all
the errors go away! Splash one.


This is a real pity. In general I like Borland products, their pricing
and the fact that they provide good competition to Microsoft. But, I live
in a UNIX world and do all my development in that environment. Having to
convert all my source to dos text format before being able to compile it
on a PC is just not good enough, and prevents me sharing a single source
tree between UNIX and DOS.


So Borland and any other PC C compiler vendors out there, please heed the
call and fix your compiler's to live in a bigger world.


BTW, I have no connection with either Microsoft or Borland other than as a
user of their compilers.


Perhaps I should do a DOS backend for gcc?
--
Simon J. Gerraty <sjg@zen.void.oz.au>
[There already is a DOS version of GCC, see the compilers FAQ. -John]
--

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