Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!wrkgrp!ets
From: ets@wrkgrp.uucp (Edward T Spire)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.rexx
Subject: exposing a stem passed as a arguement
Message-ID: <1990Oct31.173237.895@wrkgrp.uucp>
Date: 31 Oct 90 17:32:37 GMT
Organization: The Workstation Group
Lines: 35

The VM/CMS implementation seems to support a syntax which doesn't
look legal with respect to Cowlishaw's definition of the language:

name: arg stem .
      interpret 'procedure expose' stem'.'

Cowlishaw specifies that "(the procedure instruction) must be the
first instruction executed after the call or function invocation",
so how can that arg instruction sit between the procedure name and
the interpreted procedure instruction?

I tried this under Unix and it doesn't work.  What I had to do was

name: interpret 'procedure expose' arg(1)'.'

It's still shakey that this works at all, since one could argue that
the interpret instruction is "between" the label and the procedure
instruction, but I suppose one could also argue that the interpret
instruction isn't actually executed at all, and that it's operand
instruction(s) are.

Can anyone explain why the former works?
Is this kind of thing in common use?
Anybody know how the other implementations stack up on this?
Anybody know of other things that work when the language spec says
they should not?

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

========================================================================

Ed Spire                           email: ets@wrkgrp.com      (on uunet)
The Workstation Group              voice: 800-228-0255
6300 River Road, Suite 700            or  708-696-4800
Rosemont, Illinois  60018            fax: 708-696-2277