Re: Clair Grant on VMS code base

In article <vtmv72$ubo2$1@dont-email.me>,
Dave Froble  <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:

On 4/14/2025 1:06 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:

On 2025-04-14, Dave Froble <davef@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:

>
An example of a style I favor:
>
         Stat% = SYS$QIOW(       ,                       !  Event flag &
                                 ListenCh% By Value,     !  VMS channel &
                                 IO$_SETCHAR By Value,   !  Operation &
                                 IOSB::Stat%,            !  I/O status block &
                                 ,                       !  AST routine &
                                 ,                       !  AST parameter &
                                 ListenOpt::Protocol%,   !  P1 &
                                 ,                       !  P2 &
                                 ServerItemLst::Len%,    !  P3 - local socket na^
                                 BackLog% By Value,      !  P4 - connection back^
                                 SockOptItemList::Len%,  !  P5 - socket options &
                                 )                       !  P6
>
Ok, how many lines of code?
>

>
Exactly one line of code.

>
Indeed!  However, some utilities used to count lines of code might count more
than one.  So, the entire exercise should be considered subject to errors.

There are utilities that are designed to count lines of code
that account for that sort of thing.  Whether those can handle
VMS BASIC (let alone Macro-32) is, of course, a question, but
most people trying to analyze large codebases are aware that
they need special tools to do it.

Perhaps looking at the size of object files, or executables, might be a better
measure?

That's usually not a great measure, as lots of things can go
into this that do not directly reflect code: consider unrolled
loops that might artificially increase the size of program text,
large but mostly static tables of data, etc.

- Dan C.