Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!gdt!gdr!exspes
From: exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C/370 is case insensitive, and just generally rots!
Message-ID: <1989Dec15.095803.416@gdt.bath.ac.uk>
Date: 15 Dec 89 09:58:03 GMT
References: <71894@psuecl.bitnet> <1989Dec13.173114.10295@ultra.com>
Reply-To: exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol c/o University of Bath
Lines: 23

In article <1989Dec13.173114.10295@ultra.com> ted@ultra.com (Ted Schroeder) writes:
>("_" chars get turned into the "@" char
>automatically by the compiler).

Under VM/CMS it is also pretty nearly impossible to use any of the 'special'
characters {}[]|, and conversion to trigraphs is pretty much required.
(Problem is that while both XEDIT and C/370 have extended EBCDIC codes
for these characters, they use different ones.)

>loader, that I've got my opinions about, but let's not bad mouth the compiler
>when it's the rest of the IBM support you're really pissed about.

I did a port of a fairly specialized tape-reading program onto VM/CMS about
8 months ago, and found the biggest problem was with the libraries.  Under
CMS, at least, a lot of what you'd expect to find in the standard libraries
wasn't there; and a lot of what was didn't work.  Never did get 'rewind'
to work on a tape, for example.  (Though it would happily 'rewind' my 
terminal, whatever that means.)  In the end I had to write a REXX (script)
to make a disk image of a tape, and then run the C prog over that image.

-- 
Paul Smee, Univ of Bristol Comp Centre, Bristol BS8 1TW, Tel +44 272 303132
 Smee@bristol.ac.uk  :-)  (..!uunet!ukc!gdr.bath.ac.uk!exspes if you MUST)