The Deep Blue C is one of the few C compilers for the Atari 8 bit. John H. Palevich is the author of this compiler. The syntax supported by DBC is close to the ANSI C with significant limitations.

Limitations

The following language constructs are not supported :
* structs
* unions
* multidimensional arrays
* floating point numbers
* sizeof operator
* type casting
* functions return integer only results

Other non-standard properties of Deep Blue C:
* The last part of "switch" clause must be ended with: "break", "continue" or "return".
* char is unsigned.
* The maximum length of source code line has to be less than 80 characters.
* The number of arguments for functions cannot exceed 126.
* $( and $) are used instead of { and }.

Sample program

The exemplary program writes the "Hello World!" message on the user screen .
main
$(
printf("Hello World!");
$)

Performance

The DBC compiler does not create the native executable for 6502 processor but intermediate code called C-code. The C-code is then executed by C-code interpreter . According to Atari 8-bit FAQ the DBC creates binary code for Intel 8080 processor and then executed by virtual 8080 machine . It has some similarities to todays JAVA

Java

Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...

platform and it is also the main cause of low performance of DBC-created code.