Best C Compiler?

What is THE BEST (or your favorite) C compiler?

1. gcc (GNU C Compiler)
2. pcc (Portable C Compiler)
3. tcc (Tiny C Compiler)
4. dmc (Digital Mars C compiler)
5. icc (Intel C Compiler)
6. lcc (Local/Little C Compiler)
7. other (please specify)

Explain why it is your favorite or THE BEST or why other choice(s) suck.

GCC is the best, due to GNU QUALITY

does it really matter which one you use?
i just use gcc because it comes preinstalled

1. Generates acceptable code
2. Generates terrible code
3. Generates terrible code
4. Don't know / only runs on Windows / source available under non-free license
5. Generates good code / proprietary / only free-as-in-beer for non-commercial Linux use
6. Generates terrible code
7. LLVM clang: Generates acceptable code / no releases, only available as source from SVN
7. Microsoft Visual C++: generates okay code / runs only on Windows / proprietary / somewhat limited free-as-in-beer version available

Overall winner: gcc

>>3
Not really, but I was recently reading some old stuff about how GCC is bloated and buggy (especially but not limited to the MinGW port, which I know is out-dated as fuck).

It doesn't really bother me to use GCC but if there really is a better alternative then I'd give it a shot.  But so far I haven't noticed bugginess and the compile time generally isn't a problem considering faster compilers (like TCC) might not generate as good code (according to >>4)

I just wanted to know what other people think of C compilers since I have never tried to use anything other than the default GCC that I've always used.

On Win32, I would prefer MSVC over gcc anyday. On other platforms gcc. Besides that, there's some more specialized compilers for generating very efficient code for certain specific common tasks.

doesn't visual studio force you to deal with that .NET virtual machine faggotry rather than actual compilation?
or am i confused with something else?
i don't know much about dot NET.

>>7
MS bundles their compiler with Visual Studio, but it's just a separate compiler, which works independently of that IDE. It also comes with some other development kits, and is mostly 'freely available'. The proper name of the actual compiler is "Microsoft C/C++ Optimizing Compiler"

The compiler has existed since many years ago ( DOS and then 9x and of course currently NT) and has nothing to do with .NET. C# and other .NET languages come with their own compilers. Don't let the IDE and MS' marketing make you confuse unrelated software one with the other, just because they may now be bundled in the same large package.

greetings from /jp/:
>lcc on list
>watcom not on list

With GCC comes familiar suckage on whichever platform you use it on. There is an advantage to that.

>>4
7. LLVM clang: (...) no releases

Xcode 3.2, bitch.

Well, I only write code for platforms people actually use, so MSVCC for me.

>>11
Did you just say that gays are not people?

>>4
dmc is proprietary yes, but it is a fairly good compiler nonetheless.
At least it's easier to get working than gcc on Windows. Cygwin sucks ass, and mingw32 is a fragmented mess of shit.

clang was released with LLVM 2.6.

I wrote my own ansi C compiler when I was 12

acc (An^on_ix C compiler)

>>15
We all did. This thread is about compilers other people wrote.

ARM RVMDK

THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST THE BEST

>>6,11
Enjoy your forced ASM intrinsics use on x64, along with your 30% decreased performance, along with your job.

gcc works, tcc is awesome on small projects, when it works, the code is usually smaller and faster than gcc's. Shame it does not work too often.

>>21
I don't think so, Tim.

>>20
forced ASM intrinsics use on x64,
Is that a bad thing?

The real problem is you guys are using a language that is over 30 years old. Is there any other industry that is using technology old enough to be your dad and succeeding?

I think not.

>>24
LOL troll

>>24
Lisp is roughly the same age as my dad, and it's used as widely as ever

>>26
You mean not at all.

>>24
It works fine.  And I would learn to use a higher-level language but I've never found another language that fits the niche.

Python comes close, but it's interpreted (and has undergone a very awesome period wherein the language creator has decided to complete break compatibility with existing code by releasing a new version of the language with slightly different syntax -- really cool!)

Java is pig-shit, and also interpreted.  Not even going to consider C++ for obvious reasons.

Needless to say, everything else just sucks ass as a choice when I want to develop a real application.  I will just stick with C.

>>27
thatwasthejoke.asciiart

>>28
and has undergone a very awesome period
You make it sound like that's already over. Have I missed something?

I'm becoming tired of rewriting my code to conform to MSVC's C99 noncompliance, shit sucks.
GCC is better in that regard, and for quick hacks it has some nice nonstandard features like nested functions.

GCC doesn't optimize very well though, and I hear the code is intentionally kept a mess by RMS just to make sure people can't connect proprietary frontends/backends to it, because... just because.
Does anyone know of a compiler that will inline calls to function pointers, especially for expanding qsort and similar callback functions?

>>31
GCC has a plugin architecture nowadays, but it'll take years before anyone really takes advantage of it. Also, the code wasn't "kept a mess", it just intentionally lacked the functionality to write out and read in certain intermediary formats.

>>31
I hear the code is intentionally kept a mess by RMS just to make sure people can't connect proprietary frontends/backends to it, because... just because.
i lol'd.
and then cried.
it's probably true.

>>33
I doubt it, when was the last time RMS even coded?

>>34
that doesn't mean he can't command other people to do it.
he IS the self-proclaimed emperor of opensource software and the jesus of code, he has a lot of followers who will blindy do whatever he asks.

>>31
I don't understand why people want to use nested functions.

and some reasons that might have to do with why gcc is a mess:
The truth about GCC is that it is a monster of a system. This system is decades old. It has to account for a massive number of different quirks for the different standards, different languages and different architectures. The age of the system together with it's massive scope leads to results that may not be optimal as compared to more focused compilers.

>>24,31
and thus we come full circle

>>36
focus my anus

>>28
Java
interpreted.
Troll harder.

>>39
Java has a bytecode interpreter yes?