TinyC refers to V1 (tinyc.asm) and V2 (tinyc.c), which is the same as V1 but written in C. V1 is intended to compile V2, and then we have self-hosting C. Thus, this TinyC should be more like the “B” language in it's feature set, and in the idea that it is intended to compile a version of itself written in C. From there, we can iterate on the C compiler and make it better.

V1 Current Feature Set:

• Expressions with precedence
• Local variables
• if/else/else if
• Comparison operators
• while
• break/continue
• Multiple functions + function calls
• Function arguments
• Pointers (read, write, address-of)
• Array indexing
• char* (8-bit access)
• String literals
• Hex literals
• Character literals
• Comments (//)
• Global variables
• Builtins (putchar, getchar, halt, yield)

This is enough that I was able to start writing functions in C like abs, min, max, strlen, strcmp, atoi/itoa, and so on.

• List of TinyC built-in functions

A self-hosting C compiler had been my goal for quite some time. But I didn't know how to write one. I hacked out a BASIC first, then followed some guides and source code to get a Forth running. But C eluded me for several months. Eventually I was able to leverage what I had learned doing BASIC to get a parser that could compile int main(void) { return 0; } and emitted LDA #0 and RET. The debugger was simply printing the return value. The rest of the story is found in the TinyC Developer Diary. Mainly so I don't forget what I learned, as this project has gotten quite big.