Would and how much would it shrink when if, while, and for were replaced by the simple goto routine? (after all, in assembly there is only jmp and no other fancy jump instruction (I assume) ).
replyAnd PS, it's "chose your own adventure". :-) I love minimalism.
What fancy jumps are present in assembly depends on the CPU architecture. But there are always conditional jumps, like JNZ that jumps if the Zero flag isn't set.
replyThis is very nice. I'm currently writing a minimalist C compiler although my goal isn't fitting in a boot sector, it's more targeted at 8-bit systems with a lot more room than that.
replyThis is a great demonstration of how simple the bare bones of C are, which I think is one reason I and many others find it so appealing despite how Spartan it is. C really evolved from B which was a demake of Fortran, if Ken Thompson is to be trusted.
An interesting use case - for the compiler as-is or for the essentiall idea of barely-C - might be in bootstrapping chains, i.e. starting from tiny platform-specific binaries one could verify the disassembly of, and gradually building more complex tools, interpreters, and compiler, so that eventually you get to something like a version of GCC and can then build an entire OS distribution.
replyExamples:
It would be interesting to understand what non-toy programs can be coded in this subset of C. For example, could tcc be rewritten in this dialect?
replyYou may enjoy https://github.com/ludocode/onramp
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