RECIO, MIMEQP, ACCTPOST, RDCF, and BSPLINE (CUG #423): a bevy of tools from authors from around the U.S., including:

• Stream-style record I/O
• MIME binary encode/decode for email
• General ledger posting w/32-bit arithmetic library for MS-DOS
• Re-entrant DOS-Compatible File System for embedded systems
• Classic BSPLINE rendering algorithm

MICRO-C provides much more functionality than Small-C and its many derivatives. Specifically, MICRO-C supports all C statements, operators, and preprocessor directives as well as inline assembly code. MICRO-C includes data types for int, char, unsigned, struct, union, pointers, and typecasting. In other words, MICRO-C gives you everything possible except for typedef, long, double, float, enum, and bit fields. The runtime library does include a long arithmetic package with arbitrary precision up to 256 bits.

Even if you're not especially interested in the MICRO-C compiler, the you may wish to take advantage of the collection of more than 70 sample programs. Although there are simply too many to catalog here, I've listed two dozen of the most interesting:

CCREF     — C source cross referencing program
COMEXT    — Extract comments from C sources
OBSCURE   — Make C program unreadable (but it still
            compiles)
PCC       — Pretty Printer for C (source formatter
CALC      — A TSR programmers (HEX/DECIMAL
            calculator
CMOS      — Read/Write/Verify CMOS RAM from/to/with
            disk file
CSET      — TSR map of IBM PC character set
DIFF      — Displays differences between text files
GREP      — Like UNIX "GREP" search utility
HEM       — Hardware Exception Monitor TSR to trap
            unexpected interrupts
LZC       — Laser commander TSR to control
            HP-compatible printers
MEMSAVE   — Saves memory image to file
MTERM     — Tiny (10K!) TSR ANSI terminal with
            XMODEM
SHOWEXE   — Displays information about an .EXE file
TFB       — TSR File Browser
VALIDATE  — PD version of McAfee's validate. Verify file
            with two CRCs
LAPTALK   — A terminal program with script interpreter
XMODEM    — External file transfer program
MICROCAD  — Mouse-based drawing program
FE        — Font Editor
ASM86     — 8086 assembler
BASIC     — A simple BASIC interpreter
DIS85     — 8085 Cross Disassembler
TTT3D     — 3 dimensional tic-tac-toe

Since virtually every program has to do input or output, C programmers are very familiar with the stdio library. Many functions in the recio library are analogous to those in the stdio library, as shown by the following table:

Analogous stdio/recio components

     stdio             recio
----------------------------
FILE        REC
FOPEN_MAX   ROPEN_MAX
stdin       recin
fopen       ropen
fclose      rclose
fgets       rgetrec
fscanf      rgeti, rgetd, rgets, ...
clearerr    rclearerr
feof        reof
ferror      rerror

MIME is an acronym for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. It builds on the older standard by defining additional fields for mail message headers. These headers describe new types of content and organization for messages.

MIME allows mail messages to contain the following:

• Multiple objects in a single message
• Text of unlimited line length or overall length
• Character sets other than ASCII
• Multi-font messages
• Binary or application-specific files
• Images; Audio, Video, and multi-media messages

The only non-portable part of the program appears in ARITHMET.C, which contains embedded assembly language code. This allows ACCTPOST to catch arithmetic overflows, which would be disastrous for an accounting application if undetected. Otherwise, ACCTPOST is just a simple 32-bit arithmetic package, with only five operations: addition, negation, multiplication, division by 10, and remainder computation for a 32-bit number divided by 10. The last two operations cannot produce overflows and could have written in standard C. Porting to a machine with native 32-bit arithmetic should be simple.

Although the Plain Vanilla Posting Program II is copyrighted, it carries only one restriction: you may not sell the program or any program derived from it. You may give it away or charge a reasonable fee for media duplication, but may not charge anything for the software itself.

RDCF is copyrighted, but it is freeware. You may copy it and pass it on freely, as long as you pass on the entire, unmodified package, with its copyright notices intact. You may not resell it, although you may charge a reasonable fee for diskette duplication, shipping, and handling.