Advise on C Compiler.

[Abimaran Kugathasan]

What would be the suitable compiler for C in the Engineering perspective? I mean, to do floating point arithmetic, etc.

Thanks!

[Trivikram Kamat]

GNU C Compiler is like a standard C Compiler.

[Lester Burnham]

What do you mean by "suitable"? C -as well as C++, and their respective core libraries- are standardized, so that's no way to differentiate between compilers.

[k. mahesh kumar]

I think Turbo C++ compiler is the best one according to Engineering perspective

[rohan yadav]

Also Look out for gcc compiler if you are interested in system programming..

[Campbell Ritchie]

C isn't completely standardised; for example the result of

int i = 1;
i = i++;
printf("%u\n", i);

is undefined and you can get different outputs from different compilers.

As an IDE, I like Dev-C++ from bloodshed.net.

[Daniel Trebbien]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:C isn't completely standardised; for example the result of

int i = 1;
i = i++;
printf("%u\n", i);

is undefined and you can get different outputs from different compilers.

Actually, this is an example of standard undefined behavior; the C standard explicitly specifies that the effect of i = i++ is undefined: "Between the previous and next sequence point an object shall have its stored value modified at most once by the evaluation of an expression. ... The behavior is undefined in the following circumstances: A 'shall' or 'shall not' requirement that appears outside of a constraint is violated. ..."

It is, however, correct to say that some behaviors are not completely specified. Annex J.1 to the Standard, titled "Unspecified behavior", lists many of the behaviors that are not specified.

[Pradip Bhattacharya]

I will also recommend GCC. And IDE can be anything from Notepad++ to eclipse . I would highly recommend to use Makefile as it will you help in understanding the building process. Check out this link for makefile tutorial. It explains basics of makefile and gcc http://www.cs.colby.edu/maxwell/courses/tutorials/maketutor/

[Campbell Ritchie]

Please quote a makefile tutorial, so the original poster can learn about it.

[Abimaran Kugathasan]

Welcome Trivikram, Lester, mahesh, rohan, Campbell Ritchie, Daniel, Pradip for your valuable advices.

[Jesper de Jong]

GCC is also free - if you want a free C compiler there's no need to use a very old version of Turbo C. GCC is available for many platforms, including Windows.

If you specifically want a free C / C++ compiler for Windows, then Visual C++ Express Edition from Microsoft is nice.

Long ago I used to play with Turbo Pascal (around 1992, on my 20 MHz 386SX with MS-DOS...). It had the same IDE and text-based graphics library as you had with Turbo C.