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From: CDRNI@CUNYVM.BITNET ("George N. Reeke Jr.")
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370
Subject: SHARE and Assembler H
Message-ID: <9103110028.AA24890@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 11 Mar 91 00:06:35 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: IBM 370 Assembly Programming Discussion List
              <ASM370@OHSTVMA.BITNET>
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This is a reply to the person, who did not identify him/herself, who
requested suggestions on this list for requirements for Assembler H
updates.

Please ignore if this feature is already in Assembler H, as I am
mostly stuck with Assembler F, but the suggestion applies to
any S/370 Assembler.

The suggestion refers to the "scaling" (S') and "integer" (I')
attributes, which are (in my experience) restricted to use
only in macro instructions and not in open code, and are
further restricted to apply only to DC constants (not DS
variables).

I have wished for many years, as would anyone who uses
fixed point arithmetic, that these restrictions would
be removed.  I can think of no incompatibility with the
rest of the language that would occur if they were.

The point is to be able to refer to the scale of a fixed-
point variable when coding arithmetic instructions in open
code so that the scale of a variable can be changed without
recoding all the arithmetic that operates on it.  A nonsense
example of what is desired follows:

         L     RX,X
         SLA   RX,S'Y-S'X
         A     RX,Y
         ...
X        DS    FS4
Y        DS    FS8
         ...

I would be very grateful if the appropriate parties could pass
this on to the SHARE people for consideration.

Thanks, George Reeke
        Rockefeller University