[Coco] Portal-9 info

[John E. Malmberg]

Roger Taylor wrote:
> 
> CCASM allows structures to be created where you can later access the 
> fields as:
> 1) direct addresses
> 2) offsets
> 
> shape   struct
> width   rmb     2
> height  rmb     2
>         endstruct
> 
> This creates a simple data structure.  It sort of mimicks the namespace 
> directive in that you can access the fields by using:
> ldd     shape.width
> or
> ldd     shape.height
> 
> Only, CCASM uses : instead of . for the separator.

The next step is to have a description that fully documents the object 
so that a parser can produce the equivalent definitions for any language.

Attributes like volatile, constant, or such can also be useful, as they 
allow better error checking and compiler optimizations.

OpenVMS uses the SDL compiler for this, which will generate an include 
file for Macro Assembler, C, BASIC, PL/1, BLISS and many others.

There is also supposed to be an open source tool to do the equivalent.

This way a C program and an assembler program can share a structure with 
out having to be concerned that the two languages might have different 
definitions of the structure.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.net
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