Re: Urgent question: malloc and ada...

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <dewar.894114612@merv>, dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> Larry said
> 
> <<Certainly more than C.  On Alpha only, C is being used for some of the
> innards, particular for brand new modules.  As far as _calls_ to the
> operating system are concerned, however, the System Service Dispatcher
> is written in VAX assembly language, on both VAX and Alpha, so that is
> the language to which one interfaces system service calls.  Since there
> is a tight calling standard, however, it really does not cause trouble.
> I find it hard to understand the tower of babble some other operating
> systems have constructed through a lack of system-specific standards.
>>>
> 
> 
> Note here that Larry is agreeing with the proposed criterion for defining
> the standard C compiler *even* in the case of VMS, which is the one case
> in which you might have thought that C was not used in the operating system.

Not exactly, since in the case of VAX/VMS _no_ C compiler is used in
the operating system.

> So, just to recapture the interesting point (I forget who made it). The
> proposal is that in practice, a working definition of what the standard
> C compiler means is that it is the C compiler used for wrting the operating
> system.

Certainly "the standard C compiler endorsed by the manufacturer of
the operating system" makes sense, because DEC sells a C compiler
to use with VAX/VMS, even if they don't use it in the writing of
the operating system.

> However, I don't see any analogous way of getting a feel for what the
> standard Fortran or COBOL compiler may be, and here you definitely need
> to find out from the vendor which Fortran compiler(s) or COBOL compiler(s)
> their Ada compiler interfaces to.

That "endorsement" wording should work for Fortran and COBOL in a lot of
cases.

Larry Kilgallen