Re: Clair Grant on VMS code base

On 2025-04-06, Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

On 4/4/2025 2:00 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:

 
Wow. I had no idea it was now that big. OTOH, bash has got a _lot_ more
functionality in it than DCL does.

>
6 times more?
>

It wouldn't surprise me, in addition to the higher-level constructs that
bash has when compared to DCL.

 
The problem with that analysis is what DCL does.
 
It basically parses, validates, and executes commands it has been given.
That is something which can be implemented a lot more easily and concisely
in a HLL with abstracted data structure capabilities (which includes
even C) than an assembly language with no such capabilities.

>
It is not obvious to me that:
>
(LOC/FP for Macro-32) / (LOC/FP for C)
>
is a lot higher for a shell than for the average application - data
structures are not anything special for shells.
>
But maybe.

It's a lot more complicated than that.

For example, take a LL(1) RD parser. Even ignoring the processing
of the results from the parser, how much code (and how much effort)
do you think it would take to implement it in Macro-32 compared to C ?

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.