How many compilers are there in c

With this, you have a good idea of how compilers evolved over the years and how the focus of each compiler differ. List of C Compilers As early as and with the latest one at Share this.

BSD C. Lattice C. Compiling is the transformation from Source Code human readable into machine code computer executable. A compiler is a program. A compiler takes the recipe code for a new program written in a high level language and transforms this Code into a new language Machine Language that can be understood by the computer itself.

This "machine language" is difficult to impossible for humans to read and understand much less debug and maintain , thus the need for "high level languages" such as C. The compiler also ensures that your program is TYPE correct. How would the program understand what we have asked it to do? This is where the compiler comes into the picture. A compiler transforms and translates a high-end language to machine low level understandable language. The compiling process does basic translation mechanisms and also error detection.

The front end compilation includes lexical, syntax, and semantic analysis. And at the back end, the compilation does the code generation and optimization. Turbo C is one of the basic and popular compilers for the C programming language. This was first introduced in ; it was popular for its small size, compilation speed, and low price.

In , Embarcadero Technologies had re-released Turbo C as freeware. Do you remember this blue screen? The Tiny C Compiler is designed to work on slow computers with little disk space. This is an ARM processor C compiler. This compiler started its support to Windows from I don't even know C, I don't use C, I am not a member of the C community, and yet, even I know far more than the few compilers you mentioned. Despite the inroads that both OSX and Linux have been making on the desktop, and the marketshare that iOS and Android have "stolen" away from former traditional desktop users, Windows is still the dominant desktop OS, and the majority of Windows desktop C programs are probably compiled using Microsoft tools.

Traditionally, every OS vendor and every chip vendor had their own compilers. Intel has their own compiler. Then, there are the high-performance compiler vendors like PathScale and The Portland Group, whose compilers and OpenMP libraries are used for numbercrunching. Digital Mars is also still in business. Last but not least we have all the proprietary compilers for embedded microcontrollers. IIRC, there are more microcontrollers sold every year than desktop, mobile, server, workstation, and mainframe CPUs have been sold in the entire history of computing combined.

So, those are definitely not niche products. An honorary mention goes out to TruffleC , a C interpreter! So, these are 6 implementations in addition to the ones you listed which I can name off the top of my head, without even knowing anything about C. If they have different feature sets, you create a portability problem. If you're doing programming language work recreationally or for research purposes, it's likely to be in a more modern language.

Hence the proliferation of toy compilers for Scheme and ML. Although OCaml seems to be getting some traction for non-toy non-academic uses. Note this varies a lot by language. Python has various compilers none of which are really respected compared to the standard interpreter. Rust and Go have exactly one implementation each. C has Microsoft and Mono. Going by the rule of dismissing anything that's not used much, every other compiled language has 0 to 1. If you're compiling C, it's not because you're going to the JVM.

You're going to something worse than C. Far worse. And then you get to duplicate that minor hell a bunch of times for all your target platforms. It does have its own subset of undefined behavior evilness I'm looking at you size of built in types.

And if you screw up that minutiae or do it "correctly" but unexpectedly then you have decades of existing code on vital systems that will tell you how terrible you are. If you screw up an SML compiler, it just won't work - and someone might notice. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Why are there so few C compilers?

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