Re: PL/MIX

On 11 Feb 2007 16:24:42 -0500, Allan Adler <ara@nestle.csail.mit.edu>
wrote:

>Allan Adler <ara@nestle.csail.mit.edu> writes:
>
>>Anyway, this provides me with more motivation for reading the PL/360 manual at
>> http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/explain/manuals/PL360TXT.HTML
>
>Since posting this, I found a pdf version of the manual. Also, I found
>a commercial program, selling for about $50+S&H that is advertised as
>an algebraic assembly language program for x86. Right now, I'm
>downloading a free package called HLA (High Level Assembler) that runs
>under both Windows and Linux. It is compiled but the distributors
>claim that doesn't mean it isn't really still a high level assembly
>language.
Randy Hyde's ?

>They further claim that the use of macros in assembly
>languages such as MASM blurs the distinction between assembly language
>and higher level language. There's also a book.

It would be easy to make the same claim about 360 assembler.

When I first heard of HLA, some years ago, I posted a comment about it
on:
  Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 17:47:11 -0600
in Message:
  Message-ID: <a38h7toj63o39s5ei00dvinjr3kv4fcqho@4ax.com>
<snip>
I did look at 'HLA', however it reminded me too much of 'PL360'.
But, then, I have been an assembly programmer since the 1401 days.
<snip>

There is also terse at http://www.terse.com/ but I never really looked
at it.

>I don't know if it is what I want (i.e. an analogue for x86 of PL360
>or the nonexistent PL/MIX) but it does seem to offer a lot of
>desirable features, not the least of which is that I can study it on
>my own machine instead of on machines that I don't know anything about
>and don't have access to. The two obvious exercises from my point of
>view are to try to imitate HLA for MIX and to modify HLA (on x86 or on
>MIX) to be handled just using lexical scanning (if that is
>possible). It's easy to imagine, before doing any actual work, what
>might be possible. I'm pretty inexperienced so what is possible for me
>has to be at a fairly low level.

>As a side effect of learning to use
>HLA, I might actually learn something about x86 machine language,
>which I've wanted for some time to learn but have always found too
>painful to spend much time on.

If you bypass the more obscure addressing forms (espically for a
386+), to me, x86 assembler isn't all that different than sys360.

(asumming that addressing is setup for both)

360 x86

l r1,data mov eax,data
st r1,data mov data,eax

la r2,data lea ebx,data

lr r1,r2 mov eax,ebx

(it's been so long since I did 360 assembly, I no longer remember with
direction the data moves with some of the instructions)

I could sit down with a green card and do examples for a good chunk of
the instructions

--
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