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From: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
To: Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] asm helper routines in v7
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2022 20:37:58 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CANCZdfopD6jykY0EYOnyoCQ_F5HXwAM-fJNb+wNXvx8CXXCDNg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAKH6PiXJXGFncLroNX_wNW2--7mVDYrVHfZZY9_SKXHzHEP=fA@mail.gmail.com>

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On Wed, Jan 5, 2022, 8:27 PM Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>
wrote:

> > It would be nice to hear about the rationale from a primary source.
>
> Assembly language was deemed a last resort, especially as portability
> was coming to the fore. As I wrote in A Research Unix Reader,
> "Assembly language and magic constants gradually declined from the
> status of the 'real truth' (v4) to utterly forgotten (v8)." In v7,
> assembler usage was demoted to the bottom of syscall man pages. It
> could also be found in /usr/src/libc/sys/*.s
>


That makes a lot of sense. I've found errors and omissions in the assembler
documentation for the odd system call for V7 and System III ports. A little
sloppy I thought when I noticed.  I'll have to see if I can dig one up
again...

Warner

>

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  reply	other threads:[~2022-01-06  3:38 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-01-06  3:26 Douglas McIlroy
2022-01-06  3:37 ` Warner Losh [this message]
2022-01-06 16:00 ` Clem Cole
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2022-01-04 20:37 Will Senn
2022-01-04 21:12 ` Dan Cross
2022-01-04 21:24   ` Will Senn
2022-01-04 21:28     ` Warner Losh
2022-01-05 17:35       ` Dan Cross
2022-01-04 21:38 ` Clem Cole

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