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

[Chris]

On 08/05/18 21:35, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 8/5/2018 9:38 AM, Craig A. Berry wrote:

>
> I am note sure that IBM mainframe got syscalls.

Depends how you define syscall, I guess. To me, that is
at the level where you are calling functions within the
kernel, but the standard C library would, at simplest,
be at the layer directly above that and call into it.

>
> But there are something. There is the standard C RTL. And
> there are usually a pretty big chunk of extras. If it
> does not have native *nix syscalls then it usually have
> library emulating them.
>
> I find it very difficult to imagine deciding to
> use assembler to be able to read source files
> and write either assembler code or object code.
>

I doubt anyone else would either. Perhaps for some
mainframe work for historical reasons, where it's
not economic to do a complete rewrite, but iirc,
IBM used hll's for compiler writing almost as soon
as they were available. It doesn't make sense to do it
any other way.  Trying to think of the title, but there's
a really good book on early IBM machines that's worth
reading for info on that sort of thing. Will dig out
my copy and post the title later...

Chris