Structured Fortran - was Re: Self modifying code, lambda calculus

[Jay Jaeger]

On 9/23/2015 11:17 AM, Jon Elson wrote:

> On 09/23/2015 03:39 AM, ANDY HOLT wrote:
>>> From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
>> …
>>> After all, languages are supposed to expose features
>>> of the underlying machine to the programmer.
>> Many believe that the purpose of languages is to HIDE (abstract) the
>> underlying
>> machine.
>>
> Well, as far as I know, the 1401 series does NOT have binary data types,
> or floating point.  Just decimal integers, where an implied decimal
> point can be placed.  I think this would make a POSIX compliant C rather
> difficult to do.  But, of course, you could just implement what came
> naturally to the machine.  For a POSIX compliant implementation, you'd
> just about have to generate some kind of code interpreted by an
> interpreter that ran on the 1401 directly.
> 
> Jon
> 

POSIX is not, in its origins, was not a language standard.  It was an OS
interface standard.  Really not relevant to the discussion, I think.  I
do agree that trying to provide a POSIX compliant operating system
interface on such a machine would be impractical.  Even if you could do
it, there would not be enough memory.

Naturally, C programs that depended upon, say, a numerically encoded
character might fail, but one could still provide functions that
converted from a number to a character and vice/versa (as in PASCAL).

The 1410 (which is what I originally mentioned, not a 1401) does have a
floating point - normally implemented in software, but also available in
hardware (standard on a 7010).  I have to believe the 1401 had to have
something similar, since there were FORTRANs for it.  ;)

The series would be more properly referred to as the 1400 series.  The
1410 is not like, say, a 1440 which offers 1401 compatibility, aside
from a switch which quite literally caused the machine to become a 1401
instead of a 1410.

JRJ