Questions tagged [c]
The C programming language: its historical aspects and use on/targetting retro platforms.
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Why do C to Z80 compilers produce poor code?
When reading some other questions about compiling C for the Z80,
How much benefit should be expected on a more advanced compiler for z80/r800 based computers?
Native C compiler for Sinclair ZX ...
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Native C compiler for Sinclair ZX Spectrum
I am looking for a native C compiler for the Spectrum 128. I would like one which:
Has good support for the latest C standard at the time.
Is not limited to compiling ridiculously short source code.
...
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How can I create a pipe for stdin/stdout of command.com (or 4dos.com) in C or a batch file?
I'm working on a retro project and was trying to create a pipe of stdin/out/err in DOS, but I can't find any functions to to this.
For instance the pipe() function from unistd.h isn't present in ...
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Have programming languages driven hardware development?
Programming language development has been influenced by hardware design. One example from this answer mentions how C pointers were, at least in part, influenced by the design of the PDP-11. Has the ...
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Why were single quotes ('…') chosen for characters, and double quotes ("…") for strings?
In C, '' is used to denote a character, while "" is used to denote a string. Why was this syntax chosen?
I tried to research this using Wikipedia’s Timeline of Programming Languages along ...
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The history of the NULL pointer
As we know, in C to dereference a null pointer is undefined behaviour. From what I understand, the PDP-7 and the PDP-11 both have ordinary memory that can be written to and read from at address 0.
On ...
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Why did C use the arrow (->) operator instead of reusing the dot (.) operator?
In the C programming language, the syntax to access the member of a structure is
structure.member
However, a member of a structure referenced by a pointer is written as
pointer->member
...
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When was this C function definition style, with type declarations of parameters after the parameter list, invented?
Recently I dug a little bit into old graphics libraries and found libxmi. The site was last updated on 08/09/2000. And in the source code I found the following style of function definitions which I ...
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Alternatives for TurboVision on DOS
TurboVision was a library by Borland for developing TUI's (Text User Interfaces). It was included with their C++ and Pascal compilers.
Were there any other TUI libraries that supported multiple ...
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Allocate 64 KiB in Watcom C 16-bit DOS
I'm trying to allocate a 64 KiB buffer in Watcom C 16-bit DOS. I'm using the "compact" memory model which defines the code segment to be limited to 64 KiB and addressed by near pointers (...
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Which linker or object-file format imposed the 6-character restriction on external names?
It's my understanding that the reason that external identifiers in portable C programs had (still have?) to be unique in the first six characters is that six 6-bit characters¹ fill a 36-bit machine ...
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