[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Bob Eager]

On Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:55:07 +0000, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:

> < c0 (the preprocessor) handled macros and includes. c1 was the
> compiler, < which generated dreadful code as there was no space for the
> code < generator to do optimisation. c2 was the optimiser, which did a
> lot of < clever stuff. I think c1 was the limiting factor, needing
> pretty well all < the available address space for program, and data
> structures.
>  
> < Just took a look - c1 was 15K, c1 was 21K, and c2 was 8K (approx).
> That's < just code and static data. c1 would need a lot of dynamically
> allocated < storage for symbol tables, parse trees, etc.
> 
> PL/I (F) will keep the symbol table on disk if necessary.  At the end of
> each compilation it indicates the available memory requried to keep the
> symbol table off disk.

I guess the lack of disk space would have been an issue. The version of 
UNIX I'm talking about ran off a 2.4MB RK05 disk (in practice, two of 
them). But there wasn't that much space left (a chunk was swap area, not 
to mention all the commands, etc.)



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