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| | The Ergonomics of Software Porting: Automatically Configuring Software to the Runtime Environment |
 | | In enquire, a lot of code has to be duplicated: the code for short, int and long are identical except for the type of the variables used; similarly for float, double, and (where available) long double. |
 | | Enquire is a program designed to aid portability, and in a sense is a case of extreme portability: whereas most programs can depend on a set of well chosen preprocessor symbols in order to be portable, enquire has to do it alone, and it must do it on an unusually wide range of platforms. |
 | | Enquire started out as a modest program with a specific purpose, but expanded in the face of the demands of ever more platforms, compiler bugs, and user requirements, and has ended up as a useful program, for porting as its main aim, for testing compilers, for evaluating compilers, and for generating compilers for new platforms. |
| ftp.cwi.nl /steven/enquire/enquire.html (5164 words) |
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