[Info-vax] Assembly languages

[Fred. Zwarts]

Op 11.apr..2022 om 13:05 schreef Bill Gunshannon:
> On 4/11/22 05:32, VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>> In article <82ee4212-d4a9-4178-b86d-ab233d49fc9cn at googlegroups.com>, 
>> Hein RMS van den Heuvel <heinvandenheuvel at gmail.com> writes:
>>> On Saturday, April 9, 2022 at 2:51:56 PM UTC-4, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>> On 2022-04-09, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gu... at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> :
>>>>
>>>> And with that experience, I believe the time for assembly language is
>>>> well and truly past, unless it's needed for something specific such
>>>> as some inline assembly fragment to access a CPU-specific register
>>>> (for example), or really low-level stuff such as the initial interrupt
>>>
>>> I agree for production use, but disagree as a general rule notably 
>>> for OpenVMS.
>>
>> RMS CDC? ;)
>>
>>
>>> It's the only 'language' every single OpenVMS system has available.
>>> I have a dozen or so small tools I needed over the years.
>>> Silly things like a 'strings' program, a patch tool for RMS indexed 
>>> files, and more.
>>> Using Macro I can provide them as text to customers who would not 
>>> readily accept binaries.
>>
>> Careful, there are those here that believe all files should be flat 
>> streams
>> of bytes.
>>
> 
> Actually, every file on every computer is just a string of bytes.
> (or you could even say bits) Any additional formatting is just
> overlayed on top.
> 
> bill

It depends on the level from which a file is seen. At the lowest level, 
even this may be to strong. A 'string' assumes an order. Maybe a 
'collection' of bits is a better term. Even the order of bits within a 
byte is just a matter of formatting. Similarly the order of bytes within 
a block is a matter of formatting. On disk, the physical order of blocks 
may be different from the logical order of blocks, which is also a 
matter of formatting.
At the highest level, there may be much more structure in a file that 
just a sequence of bytes.