newbie building a scratch-built computer

On 1 Aug 2007 at 20:56, dwight elvey wrote: I code a lot of C, mostly for portability between systems. I don't like a lot of aspects, but it's "good enough" for most things--and there is the facility for coding inline assembly in many compilers. What's been depressing through the entire period of microcomputers is the lack of a really good assembler. Very many lack a literal constant facility, e.g. LEA EDX,="This is a string literal". Few assemblers implement data types in their macro language;; in particular, arrays of objects usually have to be synthesized lexically; there is usually no facility for remote assembly (specifying code to be stored and assembled in another location; very handy with macros). The list goes on. The odd thing is that most of these facilities were present in 60's era mainframe assemblers, where those facilities really did make things easier. I recall doing a command processor for an operator's console that featured auto command completion. A good assembler allowed me to specify the text value and format of each command and a good macro language compiled the list into a tree structure. C's preprocessor is very anemic. An example of a good preprocessor is that of PL/I, which almost duplicates most of the imperatives in the language for use at preprocessor time. In C++, some individuals take a perverse delight in showing that all manner of computation can be done using the template facility, but the same computations using the PL/I preprocessor would have been simple. Enough ranting. You work with what you have. Cheers, Chuck