[Info-vax] C... the only winning move is not to play...

[Paul Sture]

On 2014-02-12, JohnF <john at please.see.sig.for.email.com> wrote:
> VAXman- wrote:
>> I've been at SUPERVISOR mode in a lot of my time working on
>> a DCL debugger I've mentioned here a few times.
>
> If you don't mind me beating a dead horse (I seem to have
> run out of little puppies to kick), I think dcl is what
> all those str$functions we discussed were really written
> for.

I always assumed they were moe generic than that.  When I started at
my first VMS job the existing team had already written a library
of string handling routines in support of the FORTRAN IV compiler they
had.  Fortunately we got a FORTRAN 77 compiler shortly after I joined
so I could ignore our home grown library for new projects, but still
had to deal with it for older stuff.

Incidentally, the reason a VAX was dismissed from consideration at my
previous employer was that at the time FORTRAN was the only compiler
available for VMS.  The boss wanted our PDP replacement to support COBOL
and that was that.  Somewhat amusingly we ended up using PL/I and were
paying for a totally unused COBOL compiler but that's another story.

--
Paul Sture