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Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.forth,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Assembly or ....
Message-ID: <20320@ism780c.isc.com>
Date: 10 Dec 88 00:51:21 GMT
References: <1388@aucs.UUCP> <707@ethz.UUCP>
Reply-To: marv@ism780.UUCP (Marvin Rubenstein)
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica CA
Lines: 20

In article <707@ethz.UUCP> pasche@bernina.UUCP (Stephan Paschedag) writes:
>for example : I don't know a high-level language where you have control of
>             the CPU status flags.

The original FORTRAN language had statements like:

      IF SENSE SWITCH(3) 100,200
      if SENSE LIGHT(1)  500,600   (tests a status flag)

The sense swithes were settable by an operator.  The sense lights were
settable (and testable) under program control and were displayed on the
operators console.  Wonder why these statements were dropped in later
FORTRANs :-).  After all FORTRAN 77 still has:

   HALT 22

In the original FORTRAN the number 22 was displayed and the operator could
resume execution by pressing the start switch.  HALT was use primarly as
a debugging tool.

    Marv Rubinstein