[Info-vax] Assembly languages

[Bob Gezelter]

On Monday, April 11, 2022 at 11:27:19 AM UTC-4, F.Zwarts wrote:
> Op 11.apr..2022 om 13:05 schreef Bill Gunshannon:
> > On 4/11/22 05:32, VAX... at SendSpamHere.ORG wrote: 
> >> In article <82ee4212-d4a9-4178... at googlegroups.com>, 
> >> Hein RMS van den Heuvel <heinvand... 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.
Fred,

I do not have my copy of the FILES-11 Level 1 specification (authored by Andy) was cited in my Ph.D. dissertation (at Chapter 13; pp 130):

“... A volume (also often referred to as a unit) is defined as an ordered set of logical blocks. A logical block is an array of 512 8-bit bytes. The logical blocks in a volume are consecutively
numbered from 0 to n − 1, where the volume contains n logical blocks. The number assigned to a logical block is called its logical block number, or LBN. ...” [Goldstein, 1975], Section 2.1

unix and its clade use essentially the same definition. There is a related reference in the original Bell Systems Technical Journal paper.

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