Borland C++ for OS/2 Means Business

by Michael Hyman

Object-oriented programming (OOP) has revolutionized the way people develop software. This technological breakthrough enables software developers to quickly and easily develop more graphical, functional, and intuitive software, as evidenced by Borland's own use of OOP technology to many of their own products.

The acceptance of OOP is a growing industry trend, and Borland is one of the leading suppliers of OOP languages and tools. With the release of Borland C++ for OS/2, Borland brings its expertise to bear on a product that will become the standard for development of OS/2 2.x applications. Whether you are using OS/2 to run DOS and Windows applications, or to take advantage of the 32-bit multithreaded capabilities of native OS/2, Borland has a C++ compiler to meet your needs.

Borland C++ for OS/2 provides users with a GUI-based integrated development environment, global optimization, support for C++ 3.0, object-oriented debugging, precompiled headers, and smart project management. Borland C++ for OS/2 takes advantage of the OS/2 operating system to provide integrated and stand-alone GUI debugging, as well as support for multiple threads and background compilation.

Fast 32-Bit Optimizing Compiler
Borland C++ for OS/2 runs under OS/2 host systems and creates 32-bit applications for OS/2 2.x. The compiler produces 32-bit object code, supports development of multithreaded applications and mixed-mode programming in OS/2 (16-bit calls from within 32-bit executables), and supports the OS/2 calling convention. This allows developers to create OS/2 2.x executables, libraries, and DLLs, as well as text-mode programs and Presentation Manager (PM) applications.

Borland C++ for OS/2 offers programmers state-of-the-art global optimizations for 386 and 486 processors, such as dead-storage elimination, local-common subexpression elimination, global-register allocation, and intrinsic expansion. These optimizations help developers create fast, tight code.

Plus, Borland C++ for OS/2 is a 32-bit application that lets you deliver solutions quickly. It lets programmers develop in C++ (compatible with AT&T's cfront C++ 3.0) or in 100% ANSI-compatible C. The combination of C++ and C lets developers program in either or both languages, and eases the transition from C to C++. The included Turbo Assembler for OS/2 lets programmers easily include assembly-language routines in their applications.

Easy-to-Use Development Environment
Borland C++ for OS/2 features Borland's productivity enhancing integrated development environment (IDE), which runs as a PM application. The GUI development environment integrates features, such as a SpeedBar that graphically presents commonly-used commands, integrated debugging, pull-down menus, color-syntax highlighting, multiple-edit windows, and dialog boxes that greatly increase productivity by reducing the time necessary to edit, compile, and debug a program.

The IDE takes advantage of the multithread capability of OS/2 2.x and permits compilation of source files in the background, letting the developer perform other activities, such as editing, without stopping to wait for the compilation to finish. This capability results in higher programmer productivity.

Help for all components of Borland C++ for OS/2 and for PM API is available on-line.

Borland's IDE contains a powerful program editor. In addition to providing completely customizable color-syntax highlighting, and the normal editor features, such as cut, paste, search, and replace, the editor includes column blocking, variable indent and outdent, case conversion, single keystroke recording, and regular expression matching. These features make creating and editing code a pleasure.

Integrated GUI Debugging
Borland C++ for OS/2 provides full-featured, integrated GUI debugging, allowing developers to debug applications under PM without leaving the development environment. This provision makes it easy to catch and fix bugs.



Figure 1. The IDE is a high-productivity environment that lets you edit, compile, debug, and run your applications.

Turbo Debugger GX
Borland C++ for OS/2 includes a stand-alone debugger, in addition to the integrated debugger. Turbo Debugger GX offers users a graphical, source-level solution for debugging applications running on OS/2 host systems. Developers can debug single and multithread OS/2 and PM applications. The debugger offers programmers the maximum flexibility to debug a wide range of applications in a convenient environment.

The debugger provides full support for C and C++, as well as for debugging optimized code. Executable lines are graphically distinguished from comments, declarations, and code removed by the optimizer, making it much easier to understand code as you trace through it.

Turbo Debugger makes special use of screen real estate, intelligently showing more information as you expand the size of the debugger windows. Object inspectors are used throughout. You can simply click on any line of code to inspect variables, set breakpoints, change values, or get more information about a structure. And glyphs in the source windows display additional information about code properties.



Figure 2. Turbo Debugger GX offers developers a sophisticated, easy-to-use debugger.

You can view source code (Source, Modules), data (Watch, Variable, Evaluator), hardware information (Disassembly, Register, Stack, Numeric Processor), memory (Heap, Memory), and operating system details (Exceptionpoint). All are accessible with simple mouse clicks.

There is full support for traditional breakpoints, which perform an action (such as a break, log, or expression evaluation) when a particular point is encountered in code, as well as messagepoints (which act on encountering a PM message or messages), datapoints (which act when the contents of a memory address change), and exceptionpoints (which act when an exception is received from the OS/2 kernel).

Turbo Debugger GX also supports hard- and soft-mode debugging. With hard-mode debugging, when the debugger has control, only the debugger receives messages from PM. In this situation, the debugger traps the messages to all other processes. Soft-mode debugging lets other processes receive PM messages, as during normal operation.

Borland History
Borland International Incorporated is one of the leading developers and marketers of business application software and programming products. Borland is one of the industry's largest personal computer companies, and a premier supplier of database software. In addition to its prominence in the United States, Borland is a global competitor with subsidiaries, sales offices, and distributors worldwide. Michael Hyman is a Senior Product Manager for Borland International Incorporated.