Referring to my original comment that you replied to, I was talking about Turbo Pascal on DOS, which (DOS, not Turbo Pascal) did have EXE files, from early versions that I had used. But the TP version I mentioned could only create .COM files.
In fact, I remember the DEBUG utility was DEBUG.EXE, again from early DOS versions, although it was possibly DEBUG.COM earlier.
>you posted that comment in reply to stevekemp talking about the c compilers he was trying on his cp/m emulator; maybe you clicked the wrong reply link
No, I clicked the right reply link that I meant to.
But I see the issue now.
Although his context was small sized compilers on CP/M, my (implied) context was not.
Mine was just small sized compilers, period.
My comment about TP 3 was in that context, and was not referring to CP/M. IOW, I was just saying, TP 3 was another small compiler (and I omitted saying that it was on DOS). I did not even know that TP had existed on CP/M, although I had used that OS briefly, before DOS, and had actually used a Pascal compiler on it, in a programming course I was attending. I remember the machine had those big 8-inch floppy disks. (1) But that was not the TP compiler, it was some other one, I don't remember which.
So I can understand why you thought I was talking about CP/M, and hence said that it had no EXE files.
(1) Or it might have been an MP/M machine, because I vaguely remember that we had to log in to it.
admittedly my initial reply wasn't that helpful in clarifying ;)
yeah, tp3 is great. there were a lot of pretty decent compilers for ms-dog; being able to address hundreds of kilobytes of ram (even if awkwardly) and having separate 64k address spaces for code and data really reduces the difficulty of getting a decent compiler running. the compiler scene for cp/m is fairly dismal by comparison
also, the 8080 and even the z80 were a lot less hospitable to c compiler output than the 8088. on many small processors, though not the z80, sdcc by default compiles everything that isn't specifically marke as __reentrant as non-reentrant, so your parameters and local variables are statically allocated; this isn't compliant with the c standard but is surely a better default tradeoff for the 8080 (which sdcc doesn't support) and probably for the z80 as well. see https://sdcc.sourceforge.net/doc/sdccman.pdf#page=49 for details
Sure was, in many ways. That's why it had so many hardcore fans, and why people still talk about it.
Speaking to your second paragraph, IIRC, TP 3 even had overlays, although I never used that feature, maybe because of being in the early stages of my career.
