[Info-vax] Text processing examples with Fortran requested

[Michael Moroney]

VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG writes:

>>I have to deal with thousands of lines of the most gawdawful macro-32
>>code ever created.

>Doubtful.  I'll bet I've seen worse.  ;)

Hoo boy.  Don't try to out-awful this code, your ass will be kicked from
here to China.  Think of every "nasty" code trick you can think of that
you can do in Macro-32, I'm sure every one is in there somewhere. Plus
a few that nobody else ever thought of.

It took 3 skilled macro coders almost a year just to get the VAX code to
run on an Itanic and be stable enough to replace the VAX, and we feel 
lucky that we were able to do so.  The Itanic compiler does *not* like
most of the Macro "tricks" used.

I thought about writing a blog documenting all the trials and tribulations
we encountered, but never got around to doing so.  I may still do so 
(retroactively) since I did make notes.

>If you really need to change a MOVW src,dst to MOVL src,dst, writing a
>macro to do so might be your better bet.

We already have several (bad) redefined instructions.  I would sort of
like such a tool that, perhaps, could run inside an editor, find and make
a single change but pause so that I could examine the code and surrounding
code to see that it is correct and make additional changes before going to
the next one, rather than yet another layer of macros.  We've already done
a mass change where essentially the same change was made to thousands of
lines, and a second "round" is coming up.

(oh how I wish we could simply start over in another language. Pointy-
haired managers dictate otherwise)