[TUHS] FORTRAN

[Dennis Boone]

 > >Yes, Fortran is as awful for system programming as C is for numeric
 > >programming that involves throwing multidimensional arrays around.

 > Note that Pr1meOS was written in Fortran.  I did study it but no
 > longer recall what extensions it had to make that practical.

It's just PRIMOS, no E.  And the '1' in place of 'i' thing was just a
marketing/logo gimmick.

Surprisingly few language extensions.  Octal constants (:1234567).  A
file inclusion facility ($INSERT FILE>PATH>XYZ.INS.FTN).  Not much else.

Originally, much of PRIMOS was in FORTRAN, with some assembler (PMA).
Later, significant rewrites and extensions were done in PL/1 derived
systems languages (PLP and SPL), and even later some in Modula.

Awfulness is relative.  Bill Poduska has said that writing most of the
system in a higher level language saved them a lot of time, over using
assembler.

De