Force                         programming/dBASE/compiler
Sophco Debuts dBASE Compiler at Comdex
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Sophco this week at Comdex unveiled publicly Force. Force is
calimed by Sophco to be is the first native code compiler based
on the dBASE language. Like other compilers, Force compiles all
lines of programming code into machine code, unlike Clipper and
dBASE, which make decisions on a line-by-line basis.
 
With Force, a runtime engine is not attached to its code. It
generates its own native code, resulting in much smaller .EXE
files than produced by Clipper, the company reports. With
Force, you can't use variables on the fly; you must declare the
structure of the database and declare and type all your
variables and parameters. You can't take a dBASE application
and run it with Force without modifying the application, but
Force can check your syntax and flag undefined variables at
compile time.
 
Other features of Force include support for user defined
functions, one-dimensional arrays of up to 65,535 elements,
multiple data types, conditional compilation to produce several
.EXEs from a source file, and Include files to automatically
make a change in several files. Force began shipping last week,
Sophco reports.
 
Price: $495 through December 1989; $695 after.
 
Contact: Sophco, Inc., P.O. Box 7430, Boulder, CO 80306, (303)
444-1542.
 
                              --- David L. Andrews
 
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