shore@mtxinu.COM (Melinda Shore) (12/28/90)
In article <18859@rpp386.cactus.org> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F Haugh II) writes: >BLISS is best >known for its use of "." in address notation. Just ask a BLISS-bigot >to justify putting that "." in front of a variable name, then stand >clear ;-) I hardly qualify as a BLISS bigot, but I really don't see that .FOO is any odder than *foo or foo^, eh? -- Hardware brevis, software longa Melinda Shore shore@mtxinu.com mt Xinu ..!uunet!mtxinu.com!shore
atk@tigger.Colorado.EDU (Alan T. Krantz) (12/29/90)
In article <1990Dec28.022041.20793@mtxinu.COM> shore@mtxinu.com (Melinda Shore) writes: >In article <18859@rpp386.cactus.org> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F Haugh II) writes: >>BLISS is best >>known for its use of "." in address notation. Just ask a BLISS-bigot >>to justify putting that "." in front of a variable name, then stand >>clear ;-) > >I hardly qualify as a BLISS bigot, but I really don't see that >.FOO is any odder than *foo or foo^, eh? I programmed in BLISS-10 for about 4 years (I never took the time to learn BLISS-36 because we never got a BLISS-36 compiler so I don't know how they differ) but anyways, while I liked BLISS-10 a lot one of the problems was that you didn't have data types per sey. Hence for any variable you could put (or forget to put) the . in front of it. So unlike C's *foo or pascal's foo^ .foo (or simply foo) would be legal in any expression (no error (pascal) or warning (C) messages). While one would think that this would create havok, (and sometime it did) it actually wasn't that bad. Anyways, when people say C is an expression language don't listen to them - it ain't. Now BLISS-10 - that's an expression language.... It really is/was a nice language - except that it didn't have any type of standard runtime library... ------------------------------------------------------------------ | Mail: 1830 22nd street Email: atk@boulder.colorado.edu| | Apt 16 Vmail: Home: (303) 939-8256 | | Boulder, Co 80302 Office: (303) 492-8115 | ------------------------------------------------------------------
allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR) (12/29/90)
As quoted from <1990Dec28.022041.20793@mtxinu.COM> by shore@mtxinu.COM (Melinda Shore): +--------------- | In article <18859@rpp386.cactus.org> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F Haugh II) writes: | >BLISS is best | >known for its use of "." in address notation. Just ask a BLISS-bigot | >to justify putting that "." in front of a variable name, then stand | >clear ;-) | | I hardly qualify as a BLISS bigot, but I really don't see that | .FOO is any odder than *foo or foo^, eh? +--------------- What's odd about it is that it's required by *every* variable. (For those who've never been exposed to BLISS: you don't declare variables, you declare addresses. "." is the dereference operator. So to use a variable, you must *always* use the dot to specify you mean the variable and not its address. This behavior is great for writing OS kernels, device drivers, etc., but is a bit baroque for application programs. I don't remember any other oddities; the extent of my exposure to BLISS was a manual for BLISS-10 that I borrowed for a few days some 9 years ago. It didn't interest me enough to follow up, especially after comparing the horrendous number of JSYSes in TOPS-20 to the number of system calls in Xenix 2.3a, which I had just discovered.) ++Brandon -- Me: Brandon S. Allbery VHF/UHF: KB8JRR on 220, 2m, 440 Internet: allbery@NCoast.ORG Packet: KB8JRR @ WA8BXN America OnLine: KB8JRR AMPR: KB8JRR.AmPR.ORG [44.70.4.88] uunet!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery Delphi: ALLBERY