[Info-vax] VAX Macro to C conversion

[Bob Gezelter]

On Sunday, June 23, 2019 at 10:35:44 PM UTC-4, Andrew Shaw wrote:
> Hello world,
> 
> We have a pile of now quite ancient VAX MACRO code that forms part of our OpenVMS business software which we now run on Itanium. Historically we needed the performance benefits that MACRO gave us, but these days we still have performance needs, but with today's hardware we are confident that a higher level language such as C should still give the performance we need and also be easier for our non-native VMS devs to deal with.
> 
> Poking around looking for a way to move this MACRO to something slightly easier to read and manage the first hit we got was a package called XTRAN. On the surface it seems that it might be a good fit for us.
> 
> Just wondering what you folks know of this tool, or even others that might be worth our looking at.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Andrew

Andrew,

There is MACRO and there is MACRO. Converting it to C is another question. The more important question is "Converting it to maintainable C". MACRO can be obscure, as coding tricks are often subtle. FORTRAN to C is easier, it is more a question of syntax.

A full, detailed inspection of the code base is in order.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com