[Info-vax] General Availability of 9.2 for x86-64

[John Reagan]

On Monday, July 18, 2022 at 7:20:00 PM UTC-4, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 7/18/2022 2:16 PM, Simon Clubley wrote: 
> > On 2022-07-16, Arne Vajhøj <ar... at vajhoej.dk> wrote: 
> >> VMS Fortran and VMS C++ does not support newer standards - but those 
> >> newer standards are used on other platforms. 
> > 
> > Devil's Advocate time: Does adding new standards to a language sometimes 
> > make it so complex that it's better to start over with a new language 
> > that covers the same usage cases ?
> I think so. 
> 
> But probably not in the case of Fortran 95 -> 2003 and 
> C++ 98 -> 11. 
> 
> (Fortran 77 -> 90 could have been a case)
> >> VMS Pascal and VMS Basic are very much VMS specific languages, but 
> >> no dramatic changes the last 25 years. 
> >> 
> >> VMS C is the only "hot topic" due to the C99 features phase in, 
> >> the 32 bit vs 64 bit pointers issue etc.. 
> > 
> > 32-bit versus 64-bit pointers on VMS are not just a C issue. :-)
> No. 
> 
> But there are not that many languages that support both. 
> 
> And I do not remember ever seeing a question about the 
> different pointer sizes in Fortran. 
> 
> :-) 
> 
> Arne
Fortran does have support for 64-bit pointers are variables but it doesn't have 64-bit pointers as fields in a structure.  That can get in the way.  I don't think %DESCR or %STDESCR know anything.  I'm not sure about %LOC with P2 space common blocks.

Pascal has good support for 64-bit pointers with the [QUAD] attribute but it doesn't know how to create 64-bit descriptors in cases where it should when 64-bit pointers are used.  It has IADDRESS and IADDRESS64.  

COBOL does have a POINTER64 datatype so you can move them around.  Can't really deference them.

And nothing in BASIC.  "by descr" only needs to make 32-bit descriptors