Thread with 4 posts
jump to expanded post
“c is portable assembly” hasn't been true since optimising compilers appeared for it. it's an accurate description for those really simple (usually old) c compilers on the other hand… where for (;;) and while (1) are different and local variables aren't free. old c is so cute
The "portable assembly" thing always bugged me. C has functions, data types, and variables that are distinct from registers or memory locations. That's not stuff you find in assemblers.
@suetanvil this is true, but none of them are necessarily particularly sophisticated: the functions might always map to a label, the data types and variables are no more complex than you can define in an assembler macro, etc
@suetanvil it's definitely not an assembly language, but in its simple implementations it's not very far removed from it