Re: The joy of VAX

On 9/28/24 00:29, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 27 Sep 2024 10:43:13 +0100, Pancho wrote:
 

Ah! there we have the Internet and a Search engine. :-)

 My knowledge of those documents comes from having actual paper copies
while using actual physical machines, back in the day when these systems
were new.
 

Well, ok, 40 years on I can't remember every manual I read. Especially given the size of the VMS collection.
<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Vax-vms-grey-wall.jpg>
I do have a vague memory the Vax C manual you mention was an orange one, and smaller than the rest, no idea if it is a correct memory. I can't even remember much of K&R now.

I'm not sure if I had that book or not. It looks like it is heavily
orientated to calling VMS system services from C. I think my problem was
calling C from Pascal. The application was Pascal based.

 Pascal should have been easier. VAX Pascal (V2 and later) had all kinds of
elaborate facilities (nonstandard, of course) for low-level interfacing to
the system and to other languages, controlling storage layout in the
linker etc. It was a full-on systems programming language and no mistake.
 Again, I know all this from first-hand experience.

As I recall Vax Pascal was fine, Vax C was fine. Both had adequate coverage of calling system services, it was just the interlanguage calling that was poorly documented.
The VMS book I really enjoyed, but had stolen twice, was Kenah: ∗vax/vms∗ Internals & Data Structures.