Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!mordor!joyce!sri-unix!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Many people's opinions on computer languages
Message-ID: <420@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 17 Sep 88 05:53:33 GMT
References: <3938@enea.se> <923@l.cc.purdue.edu> <382@quintus.UUCP> <smL~rDM@check.sm.unisys.com> <402@quintus.UUCP> <822@cernvax.UUCP>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
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In article <822@cernvax.UUCP> hjm@cernvax.UUCP (Hubert Matthews) writes:
>If you want to use other, more perverse, instructions, then why not use small
>functions to do it.  On VMS, there are several function such as LIB$INSQHI
>to access some of the special instructions *that are peculiar to the VAX*?

>Put such things in a library - don't junk up a language to do it.  No other
>machine that I can think of has interlocked queue instructions, so what use
>is carrying around VAX stuff in a language that is to be used on 68k/*86
>and any other type of stuff.  I don't want to pay (in terms of compiler cost
>and complexity, bugs and size) for your little, one-off, instruction hacks.

I'm not sure whether this is amusing or distressing, but BSD UNIX for the
VAX added a number of functions such as
	insque(elem, pred)		% man 3 insque
	remque(elem)			% man 3 insque
	ffs(i)				% man 3 bcopy
to the UNIX library.  SunOS is not, as far as I know, available for VAXen
(pity), but it has these library functions even though the MC68010 has no
instructions to which they might correspond.  What was that about
"carrying around VAX stuff in a language ... on 68k"?

I suggest that anyone providing access to machine instructions through
libraries should do so by providing a special library which has to be
explicitly loaded, *not* in libc.a!