Re: Which target language do I choose?

Thomas Mork Farrelly <Thomas.Mork.Farrelly@nho.hydro.com> wrote:
>
>My current choice is C, and it is fully adequate for the job, but I like
>to consider other possibilities.


C does have some problems for doing low-level programming. (Yes,
I know all the C book writers say otherwise.) C does not allow
the programmer to specify how structures are stored in memory.
For something like


    struct {
        a: char;
        b: short;
        c: long;
    }


the compiler is free to rearrange the fields however it wants. At
least one compiler I used for the i860 rearranged the fields so that
'c' came first, 'b' was second, and 'a' came last in memory.


I don't know if that will be a problem for your language but if it is
you might want to look at Ada. It allows a great deal of control on
how your data is stored in memory.


Of course the problem with Ada is that many compilers try to bring
in a huge run-time library. You will have to look in the compiler
documentation to find out how to build a program without the Ada
runtime to have a minimal foot print.
[If your compiler rearranged the fields, it wasn't a standard
conforming C compiler. Compilers can pack and pad as needed, but the
C89 standard doesn't allow reordering fields in a structure. This
question came up in the standards committee, the answer was
unambiguous. -John]


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