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From: Kaz Kylheku <221-501-9011@kylheku.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Alternative C compilers on x86_64 Linux?
Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2016 23:48:55 +0000 (UTC)
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On 2016-09-02, Aharon Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
> Can I get recommendations for other (free) C compilers besides GCC and CLANG?
> I've been using the revived PCC for gawk development since it's faster
> than GCC, but recently it's developed a bug where it won't compile the
> current (valid) code.

Hi Aharon,

One idea is to treat C++ as a C dialect; then the GCC and Clang
C++ compilers are an option.

You can't use C features that aren't in C++ and vice versa.
Except those that you can hide behind a macro that is conditionally
defined for C and C++. I do this with casts, which is useful:

#ifdef __cplusplus
#define strip_qual(TYPE, EXPR) (const_cast<TYPE>(EXPR))
#define convert(TYPE, EXPR) (static_cast<TYPE>(EXPR))
#define coerce(TYPE, EXPR) (reinterpret_cast<TYPE>(EXPR))
#else
#define strip_qual(TYPE, EXPR) ((TYPE) (EXPR))
#define convert(TYPE, EXPR) ((TYPE) (EXPR))
#define coerce(TYPE, EXPR) ((TYPE) (EXPR))
#endif

The code compiles as C, but if treated as C++, it benefits
from these more constrained, safer casts.