Author:

• Name: Jack Applin
  Location: US - United States of America (United States)

To build:

    make all

A smaller version, originally called zsmall.c (and still exists as such, as the source of the alternate code), of applin.c, can be found in applin.alt.c. Your machine may have an easier time with this program. See the Alternate code section below for details.

Try:

    ./applin

Alternate code:

As noted above a smaller version can be used in case your cpp has a hard time with this entry.

Alternate build:

    make alt

Use applin.alt as you would applin above.

History about the smaller version:

Way back in 1988 ..

This entry took 75 minutes to compile on a Amdahl 5980-300E (a 55658 Dhyrstone/sec/cpu machine) using the System V cpp. (The GNU cpp when defined as BIG_CPP took only 45 seconds.)

Your cpp may not be able to compile it due to a common bug that results in cpp running out of space. The alternate code zsmall is a smaller version of the entry applin.c.

Judges’ remarks:

This entry is by far the most unusual abuse of the C preprocessor that we have received thus far. Nearly all of the real work is done in the C preprocessor!

When we compiled applin.c on an Amdahl 5890-300E, we found that it spent over 75 minutes in the System V C preprocessor! Besides showing that the standard System V cpp is slow, it showed that it contained a memory usage problem. The applin.c only uses 29 different preprocessor symbols (besides stdio.h) and yet the preprocessor ran out of space!

The GNU C preprocessor took under 45 seconds to perform the 2nd pass on the Amdahl 5890-300E. But due to the ANSI-likeness of GNU cpp (v. 1-21), it was not able to cleanly substitute a symbol that began with a ‘#’. Clearly the GNU C preprocessor is faster.

Author’s remarks:

No remarks were provided by the author.

Primary files

• applin.c - entry source code
• Makefile - entry Makefile
• applin.alt.c - alternate source code
• applin.orig.c - original source code

Secondary files

• 1988_applin.tar.bz2 - download entry tarball
• README.md - markdown source for this web page
• .entry.json - entry summary and manifest in JSON
• .gitignore - list of files that should not be committed under git
• .path - directory path from top level directory
• index.html - this web page

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