cdecl keyword ( re: C Decl ...

[mcdonald at uxe.cso.uiuc.edu]

>>....The
>>80x86 world has no excuse for the mess it has gotten itself into.

>We all have our favourite rankings of machine architectures. They are
>usually in reverse order than the number of units sold (:-(.


>The tools have to be provided.  cdecl is such a tool.  In fact, together
>with its pascal, fortran and associated keywords and the other
>inter-language features, it is part of a consistant and elegant solution to
>something that isn't even addressed in other architectures and operating
>systems (and I wont even name any n*mes).

>The full capabilities and libraries of various languages are open for mutual
>use by all.  If you have been following the various C/Fortran/etc wars going
>on in comp.whatever you might appreciate why this might be important.

It certainly is addressed on SOME other operating systems, for example,
VMS. The problem with that environment is that certain languages
(i.e. Fortran and the operating system) expect strings to be passed by
some God-awful thing called a "descriptor".  Its a big nuisance, not to
mention slow. (I wonder why my lowly PS/2 model 80-71 runs 3500 Dhrystones
with the C calling convention but 5000 with the Fortran/Pascal one, versus
a lot less than 3500 on a VAX-780? I think the answer lies in the calling
protocol.)

Doug McDonald