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From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Style [++i vs i++]
Message-ID: <6126@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 16-Jul-87 14:56:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.6126
Posted: Thu Jul 16 14:56:36 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 08:17:52 EDT
References: <8186@brl-adm.ARPA> <3453@ihlpg.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) )
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 17

In article <3453@ihlpg.ATT.COM> tainter@ihlpg.ATT.COM (Tainter) writes:
>In article <8186@brl-adm.ARPA>, escott@BONNIE.UCI.EDU (Scott Menter) writes:
>>...  The reason was that the machine had a pre-decrement and a 
>> post-increment addressing mode ...
>PDP-11	The friendliest family of 16 bit processors around.  If the VAX had
>been a true 32 bit version of this it would be a serious machine.

The VAX has similar addressing modes; even more than the PDP-11 in fact.
The VAX was the outcome of an attempt to define an extended PDP-11
architecture.  Other than building in support for BCD arithmetic and
other "fat", the VAX architecture is not bad and it is certainly a step
up from the PDP-11.  Any sales problems the VAX might have had were more
than likely due to (a) DEC's resistance to UNIX; (b) years during which
no cost-effective (by comparison with the competition) models were
available.  On the other hand, 4BSD ran only on VAXes for several years,
and that may have helped VAX sales.  In any case I think the VAX has to
be classed as a "serious machine"; it's DEC's mainstay and DEC isn't small.