Title: Members' Experiences

What is PocketC? PocketC is three things, it's a language, it's a compiler, and it's a virtual machine. The one thing that PocketC is not is C. It is not K&R C nor is it ANSIC C, it is PocketC, and as long as that remains clear, it's a good product.

PocketC the language is a simple affair, syntactically similar to C, but with a different feature set, aimed at the "hobbyist" developer. The most significant difference being the lack of structs, though this can be worked around with judicious use of #defines and organised thinking. The language includes a string type, which is supported by the ever so slightly polymorphic type system, demonstrated below:

print(pointer a) {
  puts(*a+"\n");
}
main() {
  int a=1;
  float b=2.3;
  string c="four";
  print(&a);
  print(&b);
  print(&c);
}

The PocketC compiler is hosted directly on the Palm device (although a desktop edition is available separately) so you can hack away at an idea with it away from the desktop, without lugging a laptop around. If there is an error in your code then you are told via a dialogue and can jump to that point in the memo pad (or pedit if you've got it). One problem is that sometimes it misses things that should have been compile time errors, and you get a runtime error instead.

PocketC comes with a native library/API, which includes console text I/O, pen and button input, string manipulation, math, graphics, sound, time/date, database I/O, memopad I/O, serial port I/O, system (actually miscellaneous PalmOS functions), and memory management. These libraries are not particularly well designed, and are occasionally buggy, but this shouldn't put you off as not only do the developers respond quickly to bug reports, and regularly extend the libraries, but there are tools available for the experienced developer to create their own libraries.

The virtual machine / runtime is available free, and can be distributed with applications developed. This is only a small part of PocketC, but its probably the part that lets the package down the most, as it is unfortunately slow, prone to crashing, and is a significant drain on battery life.

So in conclusion PocketC is good if you want to try out ideas on the move, or have a Palm sized itch that you want to scratch. It is cheap and cheerful, but for professional development, you are still suck on the desktop.

The author written several toy apps using PocketC, including PocketIFS which can be downloaded (including source code) from :

www.palmgear.com/software/showsoftware.cfm?&prodID=3995