[Info-vax] DCL Integer Overflow

[Simon Clubley]

On 2017-07-12, VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG <VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG> wrote:
>
> What I can not fathom is why anyone would be using DCL or, for that matter,
> any interpreted scripting lingo for doing such things?
>

Because for the right application (and the right scripting language)
it's a lot quicker to put something together than it is to use
a traditional programming language.

> I've spent years in the bowels of DCL and know very well how it works.  I
> wouldn't write 90% of the stuff I've seen in DCL and the other 10% is not
> well written DCL for what it DOES do well.  I have -- there was a thread
> here a year or so ago -- extended DCL with with a few more modern program-
> ming constructs (while, for) but it doesn't make the fact that it's read-
> as-it-goes interpreted any better.  Try booting VMS with my DCL debugger
> active and you'll soon see that inordinate amounts of time are spent just
> looking (scanning) for target labels -- the greatest offenders being in
> the network startups.  A newer scripting language won't make this aspect
> any better.  A Ramanujan-Sato series in ANY scripting language will take 
> some appreciable lifetime to converge. ;)
>

And if you take a step back then perhaps the question should become
whether the scripting language should not be using labels in that
fashion and instead using more modern constructs where you know exactly
where you need to go to in order to perform the next iteration of
the loop.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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