DeSmet C actually generated pretty good code for it's day.

Of course, that doesn't keep people from playing...

One result of this was O88, an optimizer for DeSmet C from Key Software Products. It went through the .A file generated by the compiler and replaced code snippets with smaller/more efficient code snippets, among other things (replace 80x87 emulation calls with inline 80x87 calls, replace calls to tiny utility functions with inline code, etc). This sort of optimizer is known as a "peephole optimizer". The output of O88 was then sent to ASM88 to create the .O file.

The documentation says that O88 works with the 3.03 compiler. I do not (yet) know if it will work with the output of the 3.1h compiler. I'll be looking into this soon. If you find out one way or the other, please let me know.

The O88 manual has been reconstructed from the original .WRI files and turned into a .PDF. The .PUB file in the distribution .ZIP, though nominally a Pagemaker file, can't be read by any version of Pagemaker I can find.

The manual is availble in two versions, O88_MAN.PDF and O88_DBL.PDF. The latter version is formatted for double-sided printing.

The source code to O88 is available. It was given to me as a .ZIP of someone's development directory, so it contains a fair amount of "fluff". Also, the source files themselves appear to be in the middle of a debugging session, with some extra data being sent to the screen. I have tested it, however, and the program seems to work correctly.

O88_306D.ZIP contains the source, a working executable, .BAT files to compile the optimizer, and some notes in a READ.ME file.

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These pages last modified 7/22/2005