21 Mar
2018
21 Mar
'18
10:15 p.m.
>Yes, Fortran is as awful for system programming as
C is for numeric
>programming that involves throwing multidimensional arrays around.
Note that Pr1meOS was written in Fortran. I did study
it but no
longer recall what extensions it had to make that practical.
It's just PRIMOS, no E. And the '1' in place of 'i' thing was
just a
marketing/logo gimmick.
Surprisingly few language extensions. Octal constants (:1234567). A
file inclusion facility ($INSERT FILE>PATH>XYZ.INS.FTN). Not much else.
Originally, much of PRIMOS was in FORTRAN, with some assembler (PMA).
Later, significant rewrites and extensions were done in PL/1 derived
systems languages (PLP and SPL), and even later some in Modula.
Awfulness is relative. Bill Poduska has said that writing most of the
system in a higher level language saved them a lot of time, over using
assembler.
De