[Info-vax] Calling standards, was: Re: Byte range locking - was Re: Oracle on VMS

[David Froble]

Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2016-11-25 13:38, VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>> In article <o175ok$2f0$1 at Iltempo.Update.UU.SE>, Johnny Billquist 
>> <bqt at softjar.se> writes:
>>> On 2016-11-23 18:09, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>> True.  I just looked in my RSTS manual and the RSX executive doesn't
>>>> have .ANYTHING directives at all.  Now I have to go look at some of
>>>> my other manuals and see just who else used null terminated strings.
>>>> UNIVAC-1100 did not.  It, too, had descriptors.  I have a number of
>>>> other assembler manuals be interesting to know just how many used
>>>> null termination as a common method.  I know it was fairly common
>>>> in Z80 code i worked with even before a C compiler became common.
>>>
>>> In most processors, using a NUL to indicate the end of a string makes it
>>> efficient to write the code. So you'll probably see it on almost any
>>> architecture where people want to deal with dynamic length strings.
>>>
>>> The other alternative is to keep a count, but that uses more memory, and
>>> in some cases adds a bit of complexity, which people often try to avoid
>>> (programmers being lazy and all).
>>
>> Memory is cheap!  Considering other coding practices today that bloat 
>> code,
>> a byte count of a string is pale by comparison.
> 
> Today that is true for most cases. Historically, not so much...
> 
>     Johnny
> 

Quite right!  But when you learn that building airbags into automobiles can 
drastically reduce the need for reconstructive facial surgery in the event of a 
crash, you stop building card without seat belts and airbags, right?  So why not 
do away with the use of null terminated strings?