[Info-vax] BASIC and AST routines

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 11/24/2021 8:46 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2021-11-23, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>
>> 2) Why are those arguments there?
>>
>> It is not obvious to me why Macro-32 code would want to use them
>> any more than C or Basic code.
>>
> 
> Nor to me. In an OS with the proper levels of abstraction, those
> hardware-specific registers simply should not be needed (or even
> visible) to a function used as the target of what is essentially
> just another way of doing an asynchronous callback to a function
> within an application.

So why did you suggest that it was for Macro-32?

> Since they are visible, and since they are of no use to a normal
> compiled language, there must be some cases where you have to
> preserve these values manually in Macro-32, whereas a OS based
> around a higher-level language would have its compilers generate
> the correct code sequences for you without you having to worry
> about any of this at all.

So it is there for Macro-32 because VMS C could have had a feature
but actually does not that does something that nobody seems to be doing?

And are there really any difference between the non-existing C:

int __damn_ast foobar()

and the non-existing Macro-32:

.entry  foobar
.damn_ast

?

Arne