Re: PL/S programming language

In article <LMbHi.5905$A72.2774@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, j.c.morris@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
says...
> > someone@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 writes:
> 
> > Many years ago, about 1974. I read a book on PL/S that was in the
> > University Library. If you have access to a University Library you
> > might try searching there. This PL/S was a PL/1 style of language. And
> > it was designed to write system software. As I remember the publisher
> > would also sell you a PL/S compiler written in PL/S. I don't know if
> > this is the same PL/S or not.
> 
> Sigh.  PL/S was the bane of customer sysprogs; it took the soft-of-PL/1 
> input languag and emitted assembler source, but that assembler source 
> violated just about every imaginable standard of decency.
> 
> IBM did distribute source listings (and occasionally machine readable 
> mateial) of some of the modules that were written in PL/S, and claimed
that 
> it was "distributing the source" -- and someone, somewhere in IBM was so
far 
> out of touch with reality that he expected customers to be content with
that 
> garbage.  IBM was adamant that it would not make available to customers 
> either the PL/S compiler or the language specs, although there were a
few 
> underground copies floating around the user community.

The PL/AS (PL/S was before my time) programming manuals were "candy-
stripped" (Registered IBM Confidential).  Leaving one unguarded on 
the desk, even during business hours, was a firing offense.  I never 
had one.  ;-)
 
> This was the issue that spawned the famous SHARE button (IIRC by Melinda

> Varian; not sure of the exact wording): "We want to fix the system in
the 
> language it broke in".

From what I saw, only the control structures (loops/conditionals) 
were in PL/*S.  The guts of the programs were inline assembler.

-- 
  Keith