Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!watdragon!rose!ccplumb From: ccplumb@rose.waterloo.edu (Colin Plumb) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Questions about BCPL & listboxes Keywords: BCPL listboxes spam Message-ID: <16791@watdragon.waterloo.edu> Date: 29 Sep 89 16:19:55 GMT References: <3798@spudge.UUCP> Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu Reply-To: ccplumb@rose.waterloo.edu (Colin Plumb) Distribution: na Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 21 In article <3798@spudge.UUCP> johnm@spudge.UUCP (John Munsch) writes: >1: I have read that all traces of BCPL are being expunged from AmigaDos 1.4. >My question is, does that mean that BPTR's will also go away? If so, then >won't a great deal of software break? If not, then what will the average >programmer see as being different? No, the documented interfaces will remain. The change means that the undocumented BCPL-internal interfaces will be going away, so people can patch the dos.library and such without also having to patch the corresponding entry in the BCPL global vector or whatever mess. If you're trying to write a replacement CLI, the fact that all the Commodore-standard utilities are written in BCPL and use magic undocumented BCPL techniques to get their arguments and do everything makes it very difficult. The average programmer will be able to write a replacement CLI that doesn't use Nasty Tricks, SetFuncion() the dos.library just like all the others, and not have to worry about every dos.library call grabbing 1.5 K off the stack and setting up all the address registers with really wierd values. Also, the code should be a lot faster - the BCPL compiler is pretty stupid. -- -Colin