[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

Rich Alderson news at alderson.users.panix.com
Sat Feb 5 20:38:08 EST 2022


=?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?= <arne at vajhoej.dk> writes:

> On 2/3/2022 9:15 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2022-02-02, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>> That is how you read:

>>> "the minimum application programming language they supported was also C"

>> In VMS, I can point you to the operating supplied headers that allow
>> application programs to be written in Macro-32 and call VMS system
>> services, including all the structure definitions. That makes Macro-32
>> a supported language for application programming (unfortunately).

>> In Linux, there are no such headers because assembly language is not
>> a supported application programming language.

> I think defining "supported application programming language"
> as having include files with constants used by system calls
> a bit weird.

> I believe there are lots of platforms where assembler had
> to define constants themselves and assembler was still
> used in applications. I don't think the LIB.MLB and STARLET.MLB
> concept were common.

In Macro-10, there is a concept of "universal" files, in essence dumped symbol
tables from the assembly of a source file which consists only of definitions,
including macros.

Assembly language programs include these with the SEARCH pseudo-op; the
contents are added to the in-memory symbol table tree.

Again, I suspect that the Macro-32 designers were familiar with Macro-10...

-- 
Rich Alderson					  news at alderson.users.panix.com
      Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
	  omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
									--Galen



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