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From: hamilton@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: BCPL/AmigaDOS
Message-ID: <172200058@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: Sun, 24-May-87 16:33:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uxc.172200058
Posted: Sun May 24 16:33:00 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 26-May-87 01:39:52 EDT
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Nf-From: uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!hamilton    May 24 15:33:00 1987


andy@cbmvax says:
> BCPL programs get an entire BCPL environment when they start up, with
> various things in various registers, their own backwards stack,
> and access to a bunch of BCPL routines in the DOS.
> 
> This world is hidden from C and assembly programmers.

    i agree with andy that it's best to pretend the BCPL environment
doesn't exist, in the hope that it will go away :-).
    however, just to clarify, the BCPL environment is there for ALL
programs (there's no magic "i'm-a-BCPL-program"-bit somewhere).
BCPL programs have a "BCPLstartup.o" in their first hunk to integrate
themselves into the environment provided by dos.  the only "hiding" going
on is the absence of documentation.  if you *really* wanted to, you could
integrate your C or (more likely) asm code into the BCPL environment.
you might do this to save a few bytes of ram, using the BCPL equivalents
(in WCS) of printf(), sendpacket(), etc.

	wayne hamilton
	U of Il and US Army Corps of Engineers CERL
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