gcc questions

[Ian Malone]

Dotan Cohen wrote:

 > We're learning C in the university and we MUST compile on Turbo C. So
 > I need to know how different that piece of windows software is from
 > gcc. If I compile in gcc, can I safely bet that the code will compile
 > in Turbo C? What must I know in order to assume compatibility?

It's been a long time since I used Turbo C, and I barely knew what I
was doing back then, but:

1. If you stick to the standard C libraries you will be fine.  Turbo C
    doesn't do C99 as far as I know, so use the gcc options:
    -Wall -ansi -pedantic
    (or -std=c89 instead of -ansi) to make sure your code isn't using
    any gcc specific extensions that will stop it compiling on Turbo C.

2. They may go on and teach you some things that aren't strictly ISO C,
    (eg conio.h and the Borland graphical interface) which will be
    compiler and machine dependent (the value of doing this for a rather
    out of date compiler is limited).  This page:
    <http://www.sandroid.org/TurboC/> looks interesting for providing
    Turbo C functions for gcc, but I haven't tried anything there myself.

3. <http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/q14.13.html> suggests at least one
    workaround which may be needed when compiling correct ANSI-C on the
    Turbo C compiler.  There may be others.  To save some time: the
    comp.lang.c people would tell you to go and ask at a different
    newsgroup, probably comp.msdos.programmer or a borland/turbo c one.

hth

-- 
imalone