The Lattice C Compiler was released in June 1982 by
Lifeboat Associates
Lifeboat Associates was a New York City company that was one of the largest microcomputer software distributors in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Lifeboat acted as an independent software broker marketing software to major hardware vendors such ...
and was the first
C compiler
In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...
for the
IBM Personal Computer
The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a tea ...
.
The compiler sold for $500 and would run on
PC DOS or
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few oper ...
(which at the time were the same product with different brandings). The hardware requirements were 96KB of RAM and two floppy drives.
It was ported to many other platforms, such as
mainframes (
MVS),
minicomputers (
VMS #REDIRECT VMS
{{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from ambiguous page ...
),
workstations (
UNIX
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
),
OS/2, the
Commodore Amiga,
Atari ST and the
Sinclair QL.
The compiler was subsequently repackaged by
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...
under a distribution agreement as Microsoft C version 2.0.
Microsoft developed their own C compiler that was released in April 1985 as Microsoft C Compiler 3.0.
Lattice was purchased by
SAS Institute in 1987 and rebranded as SAS/C. After this, support for other platforms dwindled until compiler development ceased for all platforms except IBM mainframes. The product is still available in versions that run on other platforms, but these are
cross compilers that only produce mainframe code.
Some of the early 1982 commercial software for the IBM PC was ported from
CP/M (where it was written for the
BDS C subset of the C language) to MS-DOS using Lattice C including
Perfect Writer,
PerfectCalc,
PerfectSpeller and
PerfectFiler. This suite was bundled with the
Seequa Chameleon and
Columbia Data Products.
* LMK,
make tool
* LSE, screen editor
* TMN, text management utilities
Reception
In a 1983 review of five C compilers for the IBM PC, ''
BYTE
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...
'' chose Lattice C as the best in the "superior quality, but expensive and unsuited to the beginner" category. It cited the software's "quick compile and execution times, small incremental code, best documentation and consistent reliability".
''
PC Magazine'' that year similarly praised Lattice C's documentation and compile-time and runtime performance, and stated that it was slightly superior to the CI-C86 and c-systems C compilers.
References
External links
* {{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060321223926/http://www.lattice.com/otherdos.htm , date=March 21, 2006 , title=DOS and OS/2 compiler
C (programming language) compilers
Amiga development software
Atari ST software
DOS software
IBM mainframe software