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From: wesommer@athena.mit.edu (William Sommerfeld)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: VMS Descriptors
Message-ID: <995@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 23-Jun-87 20:32:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: bloom-be.995
Posted: Tue Jun 23 20:32:23 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jun-87 04:21:03 EDT
References: <7960@brl-adm.ARPA>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: wesommer@athena.mit.edu (William Sommerfeld)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 30

In article <7960@brl-adm.ARPA> EDSTROM%UNCAEDU.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.EDU writes:

>This is correct about descriptors being easy to use. His version of the VMS
>"hello world" program might look like this:
>
[ 21 lines of obscure C code follow ]

That doesn't look easy at all.  I don't really know that much about
VMS, but.. 

\begin{flame}
sys$qiow() appears to be the equivalent to either write(), or
writev(), or probably both at the same time, on UNIX systems.  This
routine takes 12 arguments??!?  Eight of which are zero in this
case??!??  No wonder DEC can't get the C runtime library to work
correctly.

Without those descriptors, on my UNIX system, I can write:

main()
{
	write(1, "Hello, world!\n", 14);
}
\end{flame}

I also note that the macro he uses to initialize the descriptor uses
illegal Kernighan and Ritchie C: you can't initialize an automatic
structure.  

					- Bill