On 9/23/2015 11:17 AM, Jon Elson wrote: > On 09/23/2015 03:39 AM, ANDY HOLT wrote: >>> From: "Chuck Guzis" <ccl...@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
