Re: Smart linking under UNIX

dalamb@umiacs.umd.edu (David Lamb) writes:
>[Some years ago, I saw a Fortran compiler that looked at all of the format
>statements in a routine and emitted dummy external references to force in the
>runtime code corresponding to the format types actually used.


The FORTRAN 4 compiler for RT-11 on PDP-11s did that. The linker allowed a
runtime object module to specify only one pointer in a global table:


.csect sys$p ro,glb,ovr
.=.+26
.word i$fmt


will initialise the 12th word in sys$p and leave the rest alone.


(The formats were translated to an intermediate form where each format letter
became an offset into the table. Of course, the runtime format interpreter
module had to include references to all the format conversion routines.)
--
Lars Mathiesen, DIKU, U of Copenhagen, Denmark [uunet!]mcsun!diku!thorinn
thorinn@diku.dk
--

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.