Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz

From	BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c
Subject	Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz
Date	2013-01-17 02:42 -0600
Organization	albasani.net
Message-ID	<kd8dls$5qs$1@news.albasani.net> (permalink)
References	<kd1gra$vd6$1@dont-email.me> <hflJs.1419$bV2.186@fx14.fr7> <1h7hs9-cl3.ln1@wilbur.25thandClement.com>

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On 1/15/2013 6:06 PM, William Ahern wrote:
> BartC <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
>
>
>> "Lynn McGuire" <lmc@winsim.com> wrote in message
>> news:kd1gra$vd6$1@dont-email.me...
>>> "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz
>>>     http://damienkatz.net/2013/01/the_unreasonable_effectiveness_of_c.html
>>>
>>> " It's because C is so damn successful as an
>>> abstraction over the underlying machine and making
>>> that high level, it's made most low level languages
>>> irrelevant. C is that good at what it does."
>
>> "Callable from Anywhere
>
>> C has a standardized application binary interface (ABI) that is supported by
>> every OS, language and platform in existence."
>
>> Been carried away a bit by his own enthusiasm I think..
>
> The ABI isn't standardized across platforms, but on each platform the C ABI
> is more-or-less the prototype for the ABI of other compiled languages. Even
> JVMs usually have to grok the local platform's C ABI. Thus, most languages
> have some sort of native mechanism for interoperating with C, with varying
> degress of convenience but alwa well defined.
>
> Often, of course, the C "ABI" interoperability is a side-effect of the fact
> that the language is implemented in C. Example: Perl or PHP.
>

yeah, my own language also uses the C ABI in this sense, at least for 
external calls.

my past (long-since dead) native code-generator also used a slightly 
modified C ABI, mostly in that it was modified to sometimes behave more 
like "thiscall" and with its own funky name mangling.

also on Linux x86-64, the ABI is also slightly modified in that I am too 
lazy to bother to correctly implementing struct passing (because the 
rules are IMO kind of absurd), so I am using a simplified set of rules:
if the struct can be passed in a single register (eg: RDX or XMM0) it 
will do so;
otherwise, it will just pass/return it via a reference, and call it good 
enough.

the difference is mostly regarding non-trivial structs which the ABI 
specifies decomposing and passing in multiple registers, which I am just 
not going to bother with.

nevermind if SysV/AMD64 is one of my more disliked ABIs.
it is almost like they set out to make it overly complicated and a pain 
to implement support for or something...

Thread

"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-14 11:55 -0600
  Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2013-01-15 05:02 +0000
    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-14 22:44 -0800
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-15 11:20 -0600
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2013-01-15 20:06 +0000
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-15 20:27 +0000
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-15 17:06 -0600
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 01:52 -0600
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-15 17:08 -0600
    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz falk@rahul.net (Edward A. Falk) - 2013-01-15 22:39 +0000
    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-16 11:00 -0800
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-16 20:08 +0000
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-16 20:09 +0000
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-16 15:36 -0600
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-16 14:01 -0800
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 02:15 -0600
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2013-01-17 07:15 -0500
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Nobody <nobody@nowhere.com> - 2013-01-17 15:09 +0000
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 14:42 -0600
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-17 12:58 +0000
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 14:59 -0600
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz falk@rahul.net (Edward A. Falk) - 2013-01-19 23:37 +0000
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Lynn McGuire <lmc@winsim.com> - 2013-01-19 18:47 -0600
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-20 00:49 +0000
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> - 2013-01-18 16:30 +0100
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-19 19:12 +0000
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-19 16:40 -0600
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-20 00:52 +0000
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-20 01:26 +0000
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 00:32 -0600
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 01:42 -0600
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-20 13:06 +0000
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 11:30 -0600
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-19 19:28 -0600
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-19 19:05 -0800
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 01:32 -0600
              Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-20 00:29 -0800
                Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-20 04:24 -0600
  Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-15 23:02 +0000
    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz William Ahern <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2013-01-15 16:06 -0800
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "Mel Smith" <med_cutout_syntel@aol.com> - 2013-01-15 17:54 -0700
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-17 02:42 -0600
  Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2013-01-18 01:09 -0600
    Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-18 11:45 +0000
      Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2013-01-18 14:43 -0600
        Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2013-01-18 23:31 +0000
          Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2013-01-19 00:23 +0000
            Re: "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C" by Damien Katz Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2013-01-19 15:17 +1300

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