Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!uwm.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: As documentation wanted.
Message-ID: <15893@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 18 Apr 91 17:24:00 GMT
References: <1758@sjfc.UUCP>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 16

In article <1758@sjfc.UUCP> ggww@sjfc.UUCP (Gerry Wildenberg) writes:
>Note that I am aware of several books on VAX assembler language that give
>zero space to the VAX/UNIX assembler.

There is good reason for this.  It is that the designers and implementors
of VAX UNIX did not intend that there be much manual coding in assembly
language; it was meant to serve two functions only:
	(1) implementation of stuff that simply couldn't be done in C,
	such as small portions of the UNIX kernel and some C run-time
	support;
	(2) a target language for high-level language translators.
On VAX/VMS, on the other hand, it was intended from the outset that a
fair amount of application coding would be done in assembly language;
thus the VAX/VMS macro assembler provides much better support for manual
coding than does the VAX UNIX assembler.  I'm not sure it is a good idea
to teach VAX assembly-language programming under UNIX.