[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

Bill Gunshannon bill.gunshannon at gmail.com
Thu Feb 3 12:11:04 EST 2022


On 2/3/22 10:37, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 2/3/2022 9:21 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2022-02-02, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 2/2/22 13:21, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>> On 2022-02-01, Paul Hardy <p.g.hardy at btinternet.com> wrote:
>>>>> Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>>>>>>    ?
>>>>>> Fortran and COBOL are not suitable for writing operating system 
>>>>>> userland tools.
>>>>>
>>>>> Not that I would encourage it as an implementation language these 
>>>>> days, but
>>>>> Fortran has been used as such in the past. I believe the Fortran H 
>>>>> Extended
>>>>> optimising compiler for the IBM 360/370 was written largely  in 
>>>>> Fortran H
>>>>> Extended.
>>>>
>>>> You are correct about past use. In the context of the discussion,
>>>> I meant they are not suitable for writing userland tools _today_
>>>
>>> Why?  Just because there are other languages doesn't obsolete their
>>> use for the task.  If that were true we never needed anything after
>>> C was created.   After all the first Open Source compilers for many
>>> of the languages in use were just x-to-C translators.  P2C, F2C,
>>> heck even GNAT was originally just an Ada to C translator.  And some
>>> are still that way and work just fine. GnuCOBOL for example.
>>
>> Because C has turned out to be a better choice than Fortran for
>> writing userland tools so you would choose C (at a minimum) for
>> writing such tools today.
> 
> Maybe it would be more correct to say that C is a less bad
> choice than Fortran.
> 
> A key thing in such tools are string handling.

Any shortcomings in string handling in Fortran didn't seem to
stop it from proving the 41 primitives and 50 utilities in
STVOS.

> 
> C's with null terminated fixed size char arrays sucks
> just as much as Fortran fixed length characters.

Believe it or not, some of us still fail to see why null terminated
strings are such a problem.  Time to stop blaming a feature of the
language for the incompetence of some programmers.

> 
> But the standard C string library (string.h) is just more
> powerful than what a Fortran compiler comes with.

Maybe, but it doesn't stop you from doing userland in  Fortran,
Pascal or any other language.

> 
> But most other languages would do better.

Maybe.

> 
> Neither C nor Fortran has much protection against
> developers shooting themselves in the foot.

I am still waiting to hear how one shoots one's self in the foot
writing userland utilities in Fortran.

bill




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