[Info-vax] Creating an open source version of VMS, was: Re: OpenVMS Hobbyist Notification

[Simon Clubley]

On 2020-03-12, VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG <VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG> wrote:
> In article <r4e212$eio$1 at dont-email.me>, Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>>They are nothing more than raw longwords that have had an address
>>forced into them. On VMS, there's no way to compile all your code
>>with a /mode=64_bit and turn all your RMS control blocks into 64-bit
>>versions automatically without making major source code changes.
>
> LOL.  All those unix data structures miraculously store arbitrary lenght
> addresses without knowledge?
>

This kind of stuff is abstracted away as an implementation detail on
Unix, and is mostly hidden from source code by the compiler.

That's why (for example) fread() works just fine in both 32-bit and
64-bit mode on Unix without any source code changes required, unlike
with RMS.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.