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From: oz@yetti.UUCP (Ozan Yigit)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: SMAL/80 ("high-level assembler")
Message-ID: <198@yetti.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Jun-85 17:02:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: yetti.198
Posted: Tue Jun 18 17:02:33 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Jun-85 21:05:52 EDT
References: <196@yetti.UUCP> <573@mtung.UUCP>
Reply-To: oz@yetti.UUCP (Ozan Yigit)
Organization: York University Computer Science
Lines: 36
Keywords: Assembly, HOL, SMAL/80
Summary: 

In article <573@mtung.UUCP> jhc@mtung.UUCP (966-Jonathan Clark) writes:
>
>Please God save us from any more high-level assemblers, like
>SMAL, or PL/Z, or anything else (not macro assemblers,
>though. They are very useful - in the right context).
>
	Uhm.. The first thing a macro hacker does is to write
	a package of structured macros. There is about ten of them
	for PDP-11s. I have seen about three on VAX/VMS. That
	is getting *high level*, wouldn't you say ???
>
>My immediate reaction when faced with a SMAL program is to
>get the assembler output and then convert that into 'real'
>assembler code. SMAL just gets in the way of the underlying
>machine - although you can write 'high-level' you still
>have to know what's going on underneath (for example, you
>have to know what instructions the SMAL is translated into
>so that you can jump on the correct flag (carry, overflow,
>etc)).  
	Are we talking about SMAL/80 ??? It has 1-to-1 correspondance
	with the underlying machine, (Z80 in this case), and
	it generates what it means. LOOP and IF-THEN structures
	are straight forward, and no *secret* code is generated for
	them. Even if the conveniences of LOOP and IF-THEN constructs
	are not available, it seems to me that smal/80 style is better
	than the ancient practice of creating assemblers with barely
	understandable 3-5 character mnemonics. Naturally, 3-5 character
	mnemonics are supposed to be "more efficient" to write for the
	programmer. Think of how much time one spends in *commenting*
	each and every line. (sigh!)


	Oz	(whizzard of something or another, no doubt..)

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