[Info-vax] The (now lost) future of Alpha.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 8/3/2018 4:59 AM, invalid wrote:
> On 2018-08-02, John E. Malmberg <wb8tyw at qsl.net_work> wrote:
>> On 8/2/2018 4:56 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> On 2018-08-02 02:51, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> Well - a compiler can be written in pure C with no system calls at all
>>>> beyond the C RTL.
>>>>
>>>> So no need for any assembler to make system calls.
>>>
>>> Well, the C RTL needs some assembler in order to make those system
>>> calls... Hiding it in another library does not make it go away...
>>
>> Only if you do not implement the needed helper code as built-ins.
>>
>> The compiler should be able to generate any code that an assembler can.
> 
> That's just it. In this environment that was not true of C/C++ until fairly
> recently and it's only true if you drop into assembler in C. And of other
> languages it is not true at all, because those languages are for the
> applications programs and do not generate any instructions and cannot call
> any systems services used by systems software written in assembler.

Nonsense.

A compiler just writes either bytes (for object code) or text (for
assembler code).

fputc and fprintf are perfectly capable of doing that.

Arne