[Info-vax] VSI: "Official 8.4-1H1 Launch"

[David Froble]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-06-15 17:05:59 +0000, Hans Vlems said:
> 
>> Op maandag 15 juni 2015 13:27:11 UTC+2 schreef Simon Clubley:
>>> [snip]
>>> VMS descriptors are a really good idea I agree, but unfortunately 
>>> they are operating system specific and (as you point out) one of the 
>>> most common languages in use, C, has no builtin support for them.
> 
> Descriptors and itemlists are unfortunately big piles of glue code and 
> generally clumsy to deal with in C and assembler, whether as the emitter 
> or as the consumer.
> 
> Itemlists are a similar problem and a similar pile of glue code in 
> BASIC, Fortran, COBOL and similar.

Well, coding is what we do, right?

My only problems with item lists are first wrapping my mind around the 
concept, and that's not too hard.  The worst problem was the declining 
standards for documentation that accompanied VMS's adoption of C as a 
System Programming language.

As for coding, I had little problem with item lists in Basic.  The 
RECORD construct is rather flexible and powerful.