[Info-vax] VMS port to x86

[Paul Sture]

On Wed, 30 May 2012 08:53:51 -0500, Bob Koehler wrote:

> In article <qcKdnRmnLMttzljSnZ2dnUVZ_jednZ2d at insightbb.com>, "John
> Reagan" <johnrreagan at earthlink.net> writes:
> 
>> The
>> ability in BASIC, COBOL, etc. to build OpenVMS descriptors wouldn't be
>> found in any other variant for x86.
> 
>    An OpenVMS descriptor is a fully documented data structure, and I'm
>    not sure I've ever seen an HLL where I couldn't build it.
> 
>    On the other hand, I've yet to find out how to build actual data
>    structures in Lisp, other than the built-in cons cell.

I've both built them and picked them apart using COBOL.

One drawback was that COBOL didn't support byte integers.  You got around 
that by redefining a 2 byte integer as a 2 byte character variable.

-- 
Paul Sture