[Info-vax] VAX Macro to C conversion

[Michael Moroney]

"Robert A. Brooks" <FIRST.LAST at vmssoftware.com> writes:

>On 6/23/2019 10:35 PM, andrew at feeandl.com wrote:

>> Just wondering what you folks know of this tool, or even others that might be
>> worth our looking at.

>Never heard of the tool.

>How much carnal knowledge of the calling standard does your code have?

>We (VSI VMS engineering) have MACRO code that we know would pretty much be 
>impossible to port to any other language (I'm thinking of the host-based 
>shadowing driver).  It would need to be a complete rewrite.

Watch your language! Sh*d*w*ng is a 4 letter word! There may be children reading
this!  I need garlic, crosses and a wooden stake now! And daylight!! And a silver
bullet! Oh wait, that's for Bliss-32 code, isn't it.

And besides, without sh*d*w*ng in Macro, how will John Reagan test versions
of the macro compiler to insane limits?

Seriously, I have not heard of any automated Macro to anything else translater.
In addition to VMS Engineering usefulness, it could have been useful at my last
line of work, which involved modernization of one or two hundred thousand lines 
of VAX Macro code (not counting the data*), some of which was itself generated by
a PDP-11 Macro-11 to VAX Macro-32 converter).

(*) yes that is correct. Some of the data was generated in the form of Macro calls
with parameters, assembled/compiled with Macro-32, $ LINKed/NOHEADER into binary
files which were used as data by the main monster. These data files changed anywhere
from weekly to almost never.