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I love to see slim alternatives to bigger, older tools (acknowledging that both versions have their place in the world). However, I have to ask: why C? Apparen

I love to see slim alternatives to bigger, older tools (acknowledging that both versions have their place in the world). However, I have to ask: why C? Apparently the author is very comfortable using it, and I'm sure using C has enabled them to make a very efficient implementation with a small binary size. But this program is just slinging around strings, right? Is manual memory management actually important, or even desirable?

stabbles 4y ago
Because of bootstrapping
albertzeyer 4y ago
Rust would have been a better option. But probably it's just because the author is more familiar with C. Maybe also because the author wants it to be more cross platform.
- aldonius 4y ago
  I'm a big Rust fan in the sense that it's the language I go to nowadays to write anything serious. But it's quite a lot in terms of bootstrapping. Whereas this? Just the very basics, fully portable, pretty much any C compiler has you covered.
phoebos 4y ago
Everyone and their dog can compile C, and the initial purpose of this project was to get something working on Windows. As you say, this is a relatively uncomplicated program, and there's certainly no need for higher-level features. Is the only time you choose C when you need manual memory management? I suspect that had nothing to do with their decision.
pmarin 4y ago
He implemented this alternative explicitly to be included on his own C Windows development environment, w64devkit.
hobo_mark 4y ago
Why anything else? It is a very small tool that is needed to bootstrap a build, C is the lowest common denominator. Similarly, few things infuriate me more than the installation of some random Python package having to pull an entire Rust toolchain with it.
mariusor 4y ago
Chris mentions explicitly that he used a byte buffer plus length pair backed by an arena allocator for the strings in the application.
jcarrano 4y ago
ANSI-C (and to a lesser extent C99) is pretty much the only language which you can compile anywhere, forever. For this project portability is the #1 requirement. If he used, say Rust, then the target system needs a rust compiler, and furthermore, the language is not even close to being as standardized a C is at the moment, i.e. who knows if in the future you will still be able to compile your program that you write on 2023's dialect?
- arp242 4y ago
  Lua is pretty small, portable, and easy to build; you can ship the lua source code with a "lua-pkg-config" so you don't need to install anything else. Lua is not my favourite language, but for something like this it might be a nice fit. I think C is also fine though.
  - phoebos 4y ago
    Yes, the official Lua implementation is written in a very widely supported subset of C, so is probably one of the most portable languages along with C. Lua might well be a bit more concise for a task like this string processing, but in such as case it's just syntactic sugar really. The C is uncomplicated and efficient.

stabbles 4y ago

Because of bootstrapping

albertzeyer 4y ago

Rust would have been a better option. But probably it's just because the author is more familiar with C. Maybe also because the author wants it to be more cross platform.

aldonius 4y ago
I'm a big Rust fan in the sense that it's the language I go to nowadays to write anything serious. But it's quite a lot in terms of bootstrapping. Whereas this? Just the very basics, fully portable, pretty much any C compiler has you covered.

phoebos 4y ago

Everyone and their dog can compile C, and the initial purpose of this project was to get something working on Windows. As you say, this is a relatively uncomplicated program, and there's certainly no need for higher-level features. Is the only time you choose C when you need manual memory management? I suspect that had nothing to do with their decision.

pmarin 4y ago

He implemented this alternative explicitly to be included on his own C Windows development environment, w64devkit.

hobo_mark 4y ago

Why anything else? It is a very small tool that is needed to bootstrap a build, C is the lowest common denominator. Similarly, few things infuriate me more than the installation of some random Python package having to pull an entire Rust toolchain with it.

mariusor 4y ago

Chris mentions explicitly that he used a byte buffer plus length pair backed by an arena allocator for the strings in the application.

jcarrano 4y ago

ANSI-C (and to a lesser extent C99) is pretty much the only language which you can compile anywhere, forever. For this project portability is the #1 requirement. If he used, say Rust, then the target system needs a rust compiler, and furthermore, the language is not even close to being as standardized a C is at the moment, i.e. who knows if in the future you will still be able to compile your program that you write on 2023's dialect?

arp242 4y ago
Lua is pretty small, portable, and easy to build; you can ship the lua source code with a "lua-pkg-config" so you don't need to install anything else. Lua is not my favourite language, but for something like this it might be a nice fit. I think C is also fine though.
- phoebos 4y ago
  Yes, the official Lua implementation is written in a very widely supported subset of C, so is probably one of the most portable languages along with C. Lua might well be a bit more concise for a task like this string processing, but in such as case it's just syntactic sugar really. The C is uncomplicated and efficient.