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FAQ.md

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FAQ

Why write a C compiler?

This is my third compiler. The first one is public, I started on it because the lexer looked fun to write and kind of fell into the rest. It's not useful to compile real code. The second one is private, I wrote it for a class. It compiled a very specific dialect of C and crashed on basically anything else.

I figured I would Rewrite It In Rust and do it right this time. This is sort of the best of both worlds - I get the speed of C but the memory safety of Java/Python/Haskell.

Are you planning on supporting obscure but standard features?

Yes. Variadic arguments are implemented (for callers), functions with abstract parameter types are implemented, functions without prototypes are a work in progress, structs, unions, and enums are all implemented (with bugs).

Which C standard, exactly?

C11, although I also allow implicit int declarations (with a warning).

Why use Cranelift instead of LLVM?

I actually tried LLVM to start using Inkwell but it couldn't emit .o files and I didn't want to call the FFI directly. It also had a tendency to segfault on functions that were marked as safe. See this commit for more context.