On 24 Jan 1995, Johnathan Taylor wrote: > This DPL compiler of yours.... How much like compiling stuff under C is it? > It could be useful for equiping the sam-nativ'ish mode with the many standard > utils whose only other options would be to either crawl along in a BASIC port > or be written in machine code which is a bit of a pain IMHO
Okay. DPL is a Pascal-type language, but tweaked slightly to make it more suitable for an event-driven environment like Driver. The current version (of the compiler) contains facilities for procedures/functions, type checking, a minimum number of constructs (a DO [WHILE]..[EXIT]..LOOP [UNTIL], a IF..[ELSEIF]..[ELSEIF etc]..[ELSE]..ENDIF), a BLOCK..END and a standard set of built-in procedures/functions for interfacing with Driver, converting between types etc. It compiles code using the new Driver v2 protocol (which basically means that it runs in lomem with a block of interface code added by the OS at the bottom, allowing hooks into Driver to be written very consisely as RSTs). It's nice to use, too (IMHO), although at the moment you're limited to the standard INT (0-65535), REAL, BOOL and STRING types, and there is no way of creating your own. I want to add array support before distributing it. I've been playing with it over Xmas, and I managed to get some interesting (although practically useless) results from it; it copes well with recursive and mutually-recursive functions and string manipulation (I spent ages perfecting the garbage collection). As for using it to create standard utilties for the native C compiler... I doubt it. Well, certainly not right now, mainly because the DPL compiler (and the language) are both designed for using Driver. Steve.
