Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cheviot.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!wjh12!talcott!harvard!seismo!mcvax!ukc!cheviot!robert From: robert@cheviot.UUCP (Robert Stroud) Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject:and the PERQ Message-ID: <194@cheviot.UUCP> Date: Tue, 18-Dec-84 09:19:37 EST Article-I.D.: cheviot.194 Posted: Tue Dec 18 09:19:37 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 20-Dec-84 01:26:03 EST Reply-To: robert@cheviot.UUCP (Robert Stroud) Organization: U. of Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K. Lines: 31 According to Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology > ... there are some misguided "high-level-language" machines -- > the PERQ is an example -- which ... > ... *insist* on knowing how big the arglist is > for a given function, have it figuring in the calling sequence to the > point where you can't lie without disaster, and insist that the number > be a constant for each function. > There exist machines on which is unimplementable. > The PERQ, on which the parameter list of a function must have a constant > length, the same length for all calls. My PERQ has been microcoded as a C machine (rather than a Pascal machine) and runs a version of Unix called PNX = Version 7 + Window Manager + some System III utilities and system calls. is supplied and seems to work perfectly. The CALLING function pushes the arguments onto the stack; the CALLED function just grabs them and doesn't care how many there are. Sounds to me like whoever tried to implement C and Unix on top of an inappropriate (microcoded) architecture was misguided (:-) Robert J Stroud, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. ..!ukc!cheviot!robert