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--- sd:tinyc_for_the_sd-8516 [2026/05/30 02:58] – appledog
+++ sd:tinyc_for_the_sd-8516 [2026/06/05 16:53] (current) – appledog
@@ Line 40: / Line 40: @@
 === Compile to disk
 The other solution I am mulling is to rewrite the emitter. There's no reason it has to output to the exact location it will run at. It could output the bytes to a file instead.
+== What's Missing?
+* Preprocessor: no #include, #define, #ifdef, macros, conditional compilation. Every program is monolithic.
+Structs and unions: cannot define composite types. No member access (., ->).
+* Typedef: no type aliases.
+* Multi-dimensional arrays and array declarations: int arr[10] doesn't exist; arrays only as pointers.
+* Initializers: int g = 5; parses but doesn't run. No aggregate initializers {1, 2, 3}.
+* String literals as data: strings work only as immediate operands, not as initialized arrays.
+* Function pointers: no syntax, no calling convention.
+* Variable arguments: no ..., no va_list.
+* enum: no constant enumeration.
+* static, extern, register, volatile, const: storage class and qualifier keywords missing.
+* Multiple return types: only int (well, 24-bit). No void, char, short, long, float, double returns.
+* void type: parsed in (void) parameter list only; can't declare void variables, return void, or use void
+=== Operator gaps
+* Bitwise ops are critical for systems programming. Without them, no masking, no flag manipulation.
+* Logical && and || with short-circuit semantics matter for correctness, not just convenience.
+* ++/-- are syntactic sugar but their absence is glaring.
+* % (modulo) for any non-trivial arithmetic.
+* Compound assignment is just sugar but expected.
+=== Library
+* No standard library at all. No printf, malloc, strcmp, memcpy, strlen. Programs must be self-contained or call only the six builtins.
+* No file I/O from compiled programs (peek/poke don't qualify).
+* No dynamic memory.
+=== Compiler quality
+* No optimization passes. Every operation goes through BLA via the stack.
+* No type checking. Assigning char * to int is silent.
+* No warnings about unused variables, missing returns, narrowing conversions.
+* Error messages are minimal ("undefined variable" without line number context).
+* No symbol scoping beyond function-local — all locals share one flat namespace within a function.
+=== Language semantics
+* Pointer arithmetic doesn't scale by element size: int *p; p + 1 adds 1 byte, not 3.
+* sizeof would be needed to write portable code; absent.
+* Char arithmetic doesn't promote to int per C rules.
+* No automatic conversions, casts, or type coercion.
+== Roadmap
+This is not a roadmap.
+=== Easy
+* Bitwise operators.
+* ++/-- and compound assignment.
+* % operator; opcode already exists in the CPU, just needs parser.
+* Pre-processor. Separate pass before lexing; probably harder than it sounds.
+=== Medium
+* &&/|| with short-circuit. Needs branch generation.
+* Local arrays. int arr[10] allocates 30 bytes on stack, needs frame offset adjustment and array-as-pointer-decay.
+=== Hard/Time-consuming/Don't know
+* Initialized globals. This is, unfortunately, non-trivial :( It requires either an init phase before main or compile-time init.
+* Standard library subset -- strlen, strcmp, memcpy, printf (formatted output is a project of its own).
+* Type checking. Proper type expression evaluation, conversion rules.
+* Structs. Type representation grows from 1 byte to multi-byte type descriptor.