HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Double length integer arithmetic
Date: 13 Dec 92 00:03:37 GMT
Followup-To: comp.lang.misc
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam

In article <Bz5DIs.2uH@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
 > In article <8311@charon.cwi.nl> dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) writes:
 > >In article <Bz1rFw.9s1@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
 > > >                                                     The hardware has
 > > > deteriorated, except for speed, for the number theorist; when Lehmer
 > > > wrote his criticism, virtually all computers had double-length integer
 > > > arithmetic.
 > >You asserted that before, and I asked you to name a few computers from the
 > >beginning of Fortran that had those capabilities.  I never saw a response.
 > >Can you respond now?
 > 
 > The IBM 704-709 series, which were the machines for which Fortran was written;
 > The Univac 1100 series; the CDC 1604 and 3600; and at least the great bulk of
 > the von Neumann type machines.  I am  not too familiar with the some of the
 > earlier machines, but the more-or-less standard hardware of that time had an
 > accumulator and a multiplier/quotient register; the actual additions were
 > done in the accumulator, and on multiplication the least significant part
 > was shifted into the MQ register, with the most significant part in the
 > accumulator, and on division, with the double-length dividend in the A/MQ
 > registers, the remainder was left in the accumulator as the quotient was
 > produced in the MQ register.	

While I now remember this was not the question I posed some time ago, I
see that you now say that virtually all computers did *not* have
double-length integer arithmetic.  What you say is that they had
n*n->2n and 2n/n->n.  I agree with that.  A new question: what current
machines do not have those operations?  (I know for multiply: Cray,
HP-PA version I, and Motorola 88000, do you know others?  I know also
that the newer version of HP-PA does provide the requested multiply.
There are a few more that do not provide the divide, but they do in most
cases not even provide HW integer division.  Sometimes designers have
reasons to omit something.  And, BTW, there are also old processors
that do not provide HW integer division!  And, as another BTW, the
processors I know that do multiply by a multiply-step instructions
provide the double length product: Sparc version 7 and earlier (version
8 has the multiply), AMD 29000 (later versions have the multiply) and
IBM PC/RT.)

My old question, which you never answered, was based on another assertion
by you.  You told us that in the early days of Fortran virtually all
processors had single*single->double fp multiply.  My question still stands:
name a few from that time.
-- 
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj  amsterdam, nederland
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn  amsterdam, nederland; e-mail: dik@cwi.nl
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
From: peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva)
Subject: Re: who should specify languages?
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 20:28:19 GMT

In article <1992Dec14.201155.9907@newshost.lanl.gov> jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (J. Giles) writes:
> Having languages compatible only at the pipe-I/O level is not 
> really acceptable.  It's too clumsy, slow, and inflexible to
> be of any real use for production purposes.

Funny... it gets used that way.

> Another problem
> is that all the communication requires two system calls, and on
> most implementations: a trip through the system buffers for all
> the data (both of these are *slow* and it's preferable not to
> move the data at all).

That's an implementation detail. There are systems that transparently
use shared memory where it's available. Someone recently sent me a
paper on it... quite impressive.

And, yes, having to encode all the data you need into a byte stream
does cost some performance, but it also forces an interface that any
language can talk to... and that you can route over just about any
reliable 8-bit data path (networks, serial connections, X.25, ...)
ever invented. And it's easy to run concurrently.

On the other hand different languages have different sets of objects
they can operate on. What do you EXPECT to happen when you pass an
object to Fortran, or a floating point number to Cobol?
-- 
%Peter da Silva/77487-5012 USA/+1 713 274 5180/Have you hugged your wolf today?
/L{lineto}def/C{curveto}def/F{0 562 moveto 180 576 324 648 396 736 C 432 736 L
482 670 518 634 612 612 C}def/G{setgray}def .75 G F 612 792 L 0 792 L fill 1 G
324 720 24 0 360 arc fill 0 G 3 setlinewidth F stroke showpage % "Peerless"
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Haskell?
From: news@massey.ac.nz (USENET News System)
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 23:57:27 GMT
Organization: Massey University

From article <1992Dec15.230650.12974@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, by jvn@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Julian V. Noble):
> Although I have not heard of a ***language*** called Haskell, I know a person
> of that name, Richard Haskell --I believe at a university in Rochester, MN--
> who has taught Forth for some years and has written a book on assembly
> language programming and machine interfacing that uses shortcuts based on
> --you're way ahead of me!-- Forth. I am not sure if this book has come out
> yet or is to be published Real Soon Now.
> 
> Haskell is also the author of The Forth Course, which includes, among other
> things, development of a simple Forth for the 68hc11. More info on this and
> other stuff can doubtless be found on Comp.lang.forth or from the FIG (Forth
> Interest Group) bulletin board on GEnie, or from FIG (find a recent Forth
> Dimensions, e.g.).
> 
> I hope a) this is what you are looking for; b) that the info is of help, if so.
> 
> --jvn

I didn't see the original question, so I hope this answer is right....

Haskell is a functional language which has been developed over the last
few years by an international group of people. The language spec and
compiler are publically available, the main ones having been written
at Yale, Glasgow & Chalmers (Sweden). The group hopes the language will
become a standard in the functional world, though not everybody is
enthusiastic about it (and yet I still posted this answer :-)).

Read comp.lang.functional for further details.

Hope this helps,

	Nigel
-- 
---
Dr Nigel Perry                    Email: N.Perry@massey.ac.nz
Department of Computer Science    Tel: +64 6 356 9099 ext 8900
Massey University                 Fax: +64 6 350 5611
Palmerston North
New Zealand
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
From: Darren New <dnew@thumper.bellcore.com>
Subject: Re: Safety. Was: Re: Pointers
Organization: Bellcore
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 16:48:21 GMT

I have never seen iasf before. 

If memory serves, the body of iasf was posted in the same line where it
was used.  Basically, an inlined-function version of the union punning.

> But I am more interested in this for variables than for constants,
> although it is often needed at the present time for constants.

It would certainly work for variables.

> 	use_double(c,d)

> where, for example, c and d would be 32-bit objects and double is 64-bit.

This is a trivial modification, using a union with two 32-bit objects
overlapping one 64-bit object.

However, C cannot choose different functions based on that their value
is returned as.  What should it do if you say

process(use_double(c,d))

and you haven't declared what types "process" uses returns.  It's a tiny
amount of work to use different functions depending on what you want to
pass and what you want back, compared to actually getting it to work.

        -- Darren (can't believe I'm getting pulled into this again) New.

Darren New, MTS <dnew@thumper.bellcore.com> (MIME compliant)
445 South St/MRE 2E-279/Morristown NJ 07960 USA/(201)829-4833
Delivery of Electronic Multimedia over Networks (DEMON)
Also, formal description techniques, programming languages
``Sometimes, you just have to bite the silver bullet.''
From: jvn@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Julian V. Noble)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Haskell?
Date: 15 Dec 92 23:06:50 GMT
Organization: University of Virginia

Although I have not heard of a ***language*** called Haskell, I know a person
of that name, Richard Haskell --I believe at a university in Rochester, MN--
who has taught Forth for some years and has written a book on assembly
language programming and machine interfacing that uses shortcuts based on
--you're way ahead of me!-- Forth. I am not sure if this book has come out
yet or is to be published Real Soon Now.

Haskell is also the author of The Forth Course, which includes, among other
things, development of a simple Forth for the 68hc11. More info on this and
other stuff can doubtless be found on Comp.lang.forth or from the FIG (Forth
Interest Group) bulletin board on GEnie, or from FIG (find a recent Forth
Dimensions, e.g.).

I hope a) this is what you are looking for; b) that the info is of help, if so.

--jvn
From: bevan@cs.man.ac.uk (Stephen J Bevan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Safety.  Was: Re: Pointers
Date: 16 Dec 92 20:43:18 GMT
	<Bz9FL2.9rp@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester
In-reply-to: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu's message of 14 Dec 92 17:36:37 GMT

In article <Bz9FL2.9rp@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
   If a hardware operation, or even a "natural" operation which is somewhat
   more complicated, is not in the language, the language is excessively 
   weak if it cannot be adjoined so as to take into account hardware 
   capability.  The only language I know which has this operation explicitly
   is Galaxy. 

The problem with quoting Galaxy is that it is (as far as I'm aware) a
single source language and consequently it is difficult to separate
the language from the implementation.  Given that accessing operations
in the hardware is necessarily non-portable IMHO this is an
implementation issue not a language one.  A number of solutions have
been suggested, with GCC&TXL probably being the most popular.  What is
wrong with this or similar combinations?  (If "trouble with installing
TXL" is still the problem I'd be interested to know what machine/os
involved is).

bevan
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.arch
From: peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva)
Subject: Re: Double length integer arithmetic
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 14:43:36 GMT

In article <BzCCI2.4q8@apollo.hp.com> gardner_c@apollo.hp.com (Cal Gardner) writes:
>                 BTW - the 1620 did all of its
>                 arithmetic via table-lookup.  The multiplication and
>                 addition tables had to be loaded into the machine.
>                 Memory to memory operations and the mode was decimal.

Anyone got a technical manual on the 1620 (CADET)? I seem to be collecting
stuff like that, so I might as well go whole hog and start a library.
-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
Ferranti International Controls Corporation                'U` 
Sugar Land, TX  77487-5012 USA
+1 713 274 5180                            "Zure otsoa besarkatu al duzu gaur?"
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
From: dpmccul@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Dean McCullough)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Double length integer arithmetic
Date: 13 Dec 92 01:51:33 GMT
Organization: The Great Beyond

>The IBM 704-709 series, which were the machines for which Fortran was written;

That is a strange statement, since I used Fortran on both the IBM 650
and the IBM 1620.  Both of these machines predated the IBM 704.
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
From: peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva)
Subject: Re: who should specify languages?
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 01:36:03 GMT

In article <1992Dec10.192524.25311@newshost.lanl.gov> jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (J. Giles) writes:
> |> Do you hold to this principle?  Did you ever?  How well did it work?

> It works *really* well in programming environments in which several
> languages are available and are all compatible at the procedure call
> level.

It also works really well in UNIX, where programs are expected to work
together. I write tools in whatever language is best suited for the task.
Sometimes I write them several times as the requirements change: starting
as a shell script, then moving to awk/perl/tcl/..., and then to C. I have
one tool that's a combination of shell and C that started as Fortran and
PL/M and migrated bit by bit as time went on...

I wish there were more languages I could easily use: right now I' pretty
much limited to whatever will run on Xenix-286. Working on 386en and
Sparcs I'd be using scheme by now.
-- 
%Peter da Silva/77487-5012 USA/+1 713 274 5180/Have you hugged your wolf today?
/L{lineto}def/C{curveto}def/F{0 562 moveto 180 576 324 648 396 736 C 432 736 L
482 670 518 634 612 612 C}def/G{setgray}def .75 G F 612 792 L 0 792 L fill 1 G
324 720 24 0 360 arc fill 0 G 3 setlinewidth F stroke showpage % "Peerless"
From: latypov@server.uwindsor.ca (LATYPOV A. M.            )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: OVERLAYS|FORTRAN 77|RSX(-11)|PDP-11|Russian Programmer Needs Your Help.
Date: 19 Dec 1992 04:54:08 GMT
Organization: University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada



 Dear folks, 
 
 I have a request for information from a young person, 
 working as a programmer in the town of Ufa, in Russia. 
  
 He is interested in writing a program with OVERLAYS 
 in FORTRAN 77 in RSX(-11) system. As far as his knowledge 
 goes, the info in question can be found in "PDP-11 
 FORTRAN-77 User's Guide".  
 
 However, to my regret, the local library does not have
 the mentioned manual.  
 
 In this connection, I should be most grateful to those 
 of you who could answer the following questions: 
 
 ( i) What other literature/papers can be helpful to him? 
 
 (ii) Are there any sources of information on this subject
      (overlays in FORTRAN 77 in RSX(-11)) which can be
      accesed via ftp/telnet/mailserv? 
 
 Please reply directly to my email address, as I do not
 read this newsgroup. 
 
 Thank you for your time, 
 
 Azat   
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
From: ludemann@quintus.com (Peter Ludemann)
Subject: Re: Easy Extension Language Wanted
Organization: Quintus Corporation, Palo Alto, CA
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 00:06:23 GMT

In article <Byyw3z.2oJ@newsserver.technet.sg>, swispl@solomon.technet.sg (SW International) writes:

> I am looking for a language, which I can compile into my application
> to provide the user with the possibility to write his own
> functions etc. It must be able to call my own library-routines,
> and should be quite intuitive or at least easy for beginners.
> (Preferrably: easy for beginners, Powerful for gurus; sounds like
> C :-))

No, it doesn't sound like C (which like dynamite and electricity should
be kept out of the hands of beginners); it sounds like REXX :-)

Seriously, if you're using an IBM mainframe or OS/2 system, you should
consider REXX, because it's interpreted, well-integrated with the operating
system (the interpreter is already there!), and well-designed for beginners.  

If you're not on in an IBM environment, why not pick one of the "AI"
languages such as Lisp, ML, or Prolog.  In the case of Prolog, you can
very easily design your own language (using the "grammar rule" formalism)
or you can just use the native facilities for dynamically creating new
predicates (Lisp and Smalltalk also allow dynamically "compiling" new functions).

We recently used Prolog to build a user-extensible system for complex
pattern matching between files (e.g., one file has "First Street" and
the other file has "1st St").  We allow users to write their own patterns,
which are trivially compiled dynamically and executed.  [Yes, Prolog is
plenty fast enough for this application; and our customer has no desire for 
us to spend the next few months re-coding it in yacc/lex/C.]

-----

Peter Ludemann 				Manager, Large Systems Consulting
Quintus Corporation                     InterNet:       ludemann@quintus.com
2100 Geng Road                          FAX:            +1-415-494-7608
Palo Alto, California 94303             Phone:          +1-415-813-3819
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
From: g0pereir@cdf.toronto.edu (Rui M. Pereira)
Subject: Re: Turing
Reply-To:  rui@r-node.pci.on.ca
Organization: UofT.Terra.Sol.Western-Spiral-arm.Milky-Way.Universe
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 23:32:42 GMT

pmr@rock.concert.net (Paul M Reilly -- Personal Account) writes:
| I recently came across the Turing language, which appears to be an Ada
| derivative.  Can anyone tell me if it is freely available and where
| one might access it (archie came up empty)?  It was being used in a CS
| intro course at UNC-CH.

Actually, I think Turing is Fortran derived, but not sure ...

Anyway, Turing was 'created' at the University Of Toronto, where it is
the main programming language for most of the computer science courses
(courses not using it are theory and language-oriented (e.g. a C
course is offered)).  As far as I know, Turing is not free (not sure
if educational institutes get it for free though).  It is available
for a number of platforms (e.g. the ones I know UNIX (sparc, mips),
MSDOS).  There is now an objected oriented interface, plus extensions
to the language (the extensions are available as Turing Plus).

I don't know who to email to for more info, but try asking
admin@cdf.toronto.edu, or admin@csri.toronto.edu (I think the address
is csri.toronto.edu, but you might have to look it up). Csri (Computer
Science Research Institute) are the 'creators' of Turing.

-- 
 -=[Rui M. Pereira]=- <g0pereir@cdf.toronto.edu>|<rui@r-node.{pci.on.ca|uucp}>
  "Sometimes I think the best proof that intelligent life exists elsewhere
       is that none of has tried to contact us."  Calvin and Hobbes

Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.arch
From: johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine)
Subject: A little Fortran history
Organization: I.E.C.C.
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 05:20:09 GMT
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers

>The IBM 704-709 series, which were the machines for which Fortran
>was written;

dpmccul@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Dean McCullough) writes:
>That is a strange statement, since I used Fortran on both the IBM 650
>and the IBM 1620.  Both of these machines predated the IBM 704.

Short history review: Fortran was indeed written for the 704 and the
mostly compatible 709, which were at the time IBM's fastest scientific
machines, being word-parallel binary machines with random access memory.
It quickly became popular and several versions of Fortran appeared for the
650, a slower but very reliable and popular digit serial decimal machine
which used a 12000 RPM drum* as its main memory. The 650 was contemporary
with the 704; work started on the 650 considerably earlier but both
shipped in 1954.  Probably the first 650 Fortran was FORTRANSIT which
translated Fortran to IT, the 650 Internal Translator language from
Carnegie Tech.

The 1620 was announced in 1959 as a replacement for the 650.  The 650, 704
and 709 were vacuum tube machines, while the 1620, arguably IBM's first
minicomputer, was all transistors.  By the time the 1620 came along
Fortran was the dominant language and all 1620s were shipped with a
Fortran compiler.

A good reference is "IBM's Early Computers," written by Bashe et al. (who
should know what they're talking about because they were there at the
time) and published by the MIT Press.

* - Yes, I said a 12,000 RPM drum.  Pretty amazing, eh?
-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, POB 349, Cambridge MA 02238, +1 617 492 3869
johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us, {ima|spdcc|world}!iecc!johnl
"Time is Money!  Steal some today!"
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
From: jch@rdg.dec.com (John Haxby)
Subject: Re: who should specify languages?
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 18:03:08 GMT

In article <1992Dec14.201155.9907@newshost.lanl.gov>, jlg@cochiti.lanl.gov (J. Giles) writes:
|> Having languages compatible only at the pipe-I/O level is not 
|> really acceptable.  It's too clumsy, slow, and inflexible to
|> be of any real use for production purposes.  Operationally,
|> a pipe is a weak subset of the functionality that should be
|> present in an interprocess communications package.  Semantically,
|> pipes are a very weak subset of function composition.  Among the
|> problems is the lack of type-checking across the protocol - all your
|> data must be reduced to byte streams (you *could* encode the type 
|> information into the stream, but who does?).  Another problem
|> is that all the communication requires two system calls, and on
|> most implementations: a trip through the system buffers for all
|> the data (both of these are *slow* and it's preferable not to
|> move the data at all).

Well, it depends.  In some cases, procedure call `compatibility' is a
good thing: although you can take it too far (eg VMS where practically
everything is call-by-reference for the sake of FORTRAN).

In some cases, however, the textual integration that UNIX is a shining
example of it useful: it helps the modularization; it means that itsy bitsy
programs can do itsy bitsy jobs and join together in a useful way.  Not
that I'm suggesting that this is a good way to write, say, a wysiwyg editor,
but it's not a bad way to write a text processing system (the troff family, for
example), because it allows you to do all sorts of other things to get
interesting and unssual spelling mistakse :-)

-- 
John Haxby, Definitively Wrong.
Digital				<jch@rdg.dec.com>
Reading, England		<...!uknet!wessex!jch>

----------------------------------------------------------------
The opinions expressed herein are my own, not my employers.
From: eks@daimi.aau.dk (Eigil Krogh S|rensen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: C <-> Pascal
Date: 20 Dec 92 14:55:37 GMT
Organization: DAIMI: Computer Science Department, Aarhus University, Denmark




On  Motorola systemV68  R3V5.1 UNIX  (3300/68030-based) and  SCO UNIX -
i486   I   need    to   call   Pascal   (Oregon    Software   Pascal-2)
procedures/functions from C programs.

For  that reason  I must  know exactly  how C  respective Pascal passes
parameters to  functions/procedures and  how different  types (integer,
float, real, string etc.) are stored in memory.

Proposals (e.g. literature)  about where/how to find  information about
all or part of this are most welcome.

Thank you in advance.


Eigil Krogh Sorensen.
From: pasc1226@altair.selu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Modem to Modem Linkage : +more
Date: 16 Dec 92 18:49:20 -0600
Organization: Southeastern Louisiana University

Good-morrow !!!

I have a project that I'm writing in MicroSoft C and/or Turbo pascal 5.5/6.0

The project is a game that let's two computer users play via modem to modem.

Would appreciate the any help from any one with previous experince in
communications source code procedures. 

I am open to other language intergration options. Hence the reason why I'm
posting here !!!

Are there any run time(shareware) libraries out their that support this type of
computer interaction ?

Please specify what steps are needed in the generation of the above code.


Thanks for the memories - especially the RAM.
TNALL.PASC1226.SELU.EDU
Troy Lee Nall
Hammond, LA. USA
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
From: jbs4930@usl.edu (Scott Jeffrey B)
Subject: Qbasic Book Source?
Organization: University of Southwestern Louisiana
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 05:55:10 GMT

Does anyone know where I can find a beginnger's book on
the Qbasic that comes with MS-DOS 5.0?

Thanks for any replies.
--
Brett Scott
jbs4930@usl.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.arch