Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!apollo!perry
From: perry@apollo.HP.COM (Jim Perry)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: PL/I and Reserved Words
Message-ID: <467175a4.183dc@apollo.HP.COM>
Date: 25 Oct 89 19:02:00 GMT
References: <2958@usceast.UUCP> <4560@bd.sei.cmu.edu> <465396f5.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> <6614@ficc.uu.net> <4666d281.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> <10994@riks.csl.sony.co.jp>
Reply-To: perry@apollo.HP.COM (Jim Perry)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Apollo Division - Chelmsford, MA
Lines: 31
Keywords: PL/I keywords

In article <10994@riks.csl.sony.co.jp> diamond@riks. (Norman Diamond) writes:
>In article <4666d281.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> perry@apollo.HP.COM (Jim Perry) writes:
>
>[about someone's opinion of PL/I]
>
>>I'll take exception with "doesn't run on any interesting machines"; I'll
>>grant you that there's no UNIX implementation that I'm aware of, and that
>>may have killed it.
>
>Sure, the lack of a Unix implementation helped kill it (and maybe we'll
>see the death of ANSI magnetic tape formats too).  However, surely PL/I
>killed itself.  Would you really specify precisions on your integers?
>If so, maintenance will kill you.  This is one of the things Wirth got
>perfectly right.

PL/I, despite its best intentions, is not as portable as it might be, and
fell into disfavor on that account.  Also, it's large enough that few
people actually bother to learn to use it, and condemn it in ignorance.
Before the UNIX/C/Open systems bandwagon, PL/I subset G was gaining 
acceptance.  It's not the greatest language in the world, but it's not
the worst either.  I'd rather use a good PL/I than C, for instance.
Besides, it's hardly dead... 

I'd specify integers as "fixed binary", which means "integer" (OK, so 
PL/I just *HAD* to use bizarre names).  The compiler decides the best
size for this machine.  
-
-- 
Jim Perry   perry@apollo.com    HP/Apollo, Chelmsford MA
This particularly rapid unintelligible patter 
isn't generally heard and if it is it doesn't matter.