[Info-vax] Kednos PL/I

[cao...@pitbulluk.org]

On Wednesday, September 13, 2023 at 9:01:18 AM UTC+1, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
> On Tue, 2023-09-12 at 20:18 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote: 
> > https://kednos.com/ says: 
> > 
> > <quote> 
> > After many years supplying PL/I compilers to OpenVMS and Tru64 UNIX 
> > users around the world, from October 2016, Kednos will cease trading. 
> > The PL/I compilers, run-time libraries and integration tools will no 
> > longer be updated or supported by Kednos.  Licenses for commercial 
> > purposes can still be obtained on an "as is" basis 
> > </quote> 
> > 
> > and https://kednos.com/kednos/Hobbyist still exist. 
> > 
> > But hobbyist license request fails.
> if they are not doing anything with these, they should release it all. 
> -- 
> Tactical Nuclear Kittens

Not that long ago, I was playing with the Kednos PL/I compiler 3.8-003 for VAX. It does some rather excellent code optimisations but gets a bit weird with procedures that have multiple entry points - I've used them as single-level closures or just encapsulating some locally accessible global state. I don't recall other PL/I compilers being so sensitive during syntax analysis though. The Kednos compiler trips up really badly on the simplest of syntax errors (missing semicolons most obviously) and the fallout is quite spectacular. Although floating types will map appropriately to F, G/D or H representation, I was also a little disappointed that integer handling appears limited to a maximum of 32 bits (31 + sign bit).
It was a nice trip down memory lane.

K