Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!lll-tis!ames!ptsfa!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: machine specific languages (was: Re: C machine)
Message-ID: <1297@sugar.UUCP>
Date: 22 Dec 87 12:54:45 GMT
References: <7535@alice.UUCP> <673@brandx.rutgers.edu>
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 23

In article <673@brandx.rutgers.edu>, webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber) writes:
> In article <7535@alice.UUCP>, dmr@alice.UUCP (and he should know) writes:
> > There is in fact rather little that is PDP-11 specific in C.
> > Aside from things that are nearly universal these days, it prefers ...

> To me, a language is machine specific when it supports exactly the set of
> primitive data objects that the machine supports with exactly the same
> set of primitive operations.  

> Clearly the PDP-11 instruction set wasn't as restrictive as C, but C
> does rather nicely mirror the kinds of standard conventions that a
> PDP-11 assembly programmer would typically use.

I used to think the same thing about PL/M and the 8080/8086 (geeze, this
language is clearly designed by people who did a lot of coding on the 8080),
until it was pointed out to me that the same constructs I was looking at
existed in PL/1. The most you could say was that PL/1 might have been chosen
as a model because it fit the 8080 register layout so well.

So perhaps it's more a case of Ritchie getting into the 11 because it fit
his language ideas, rather than the other way around.
-- 
-- Peter da Silva  `-_-'  ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter
-- Disclaimer: These U aren't mere opinions... these are *values*.