On 4 April 2011 21:53, W. Kevin Kelley <wkkel...@optonline.net> wrote:
> The floating point instructions in some ways are easier to use than the > integer > instructions because you don't have to worry about scaling and implied > decimal points and all of that. The biggest problem with floating point is > converting numbers to floating point and from floating point (any of the 3 > formats). Until the conversion instructions came along to assist in the > effort, > doing the conversions was pretty arcane. Now its easier, but still work. The > book "IBM Assembler Language Programming" by Sharon Tuggle (long out of > print I imagine) does discuss the hexadecimal floating instructions and does > provide sample programs for converting into and out of hexadecimal floating > point. I was the reviewer for the floating point section. Another implementation of conversion routines that makes an interesting reference is from Cornell University, available in the VMSHARE archives at http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/read?fn=CONVASM&ft=NOTE&line=1 > I still find TSO TEST useful for testing short segments of Assembler code, and > one of my frustrations is that it only formats the original 4 floating point > registers (0, 2, 4 and 6). It hasn't a clue that there are now 16 floating > point > registers or that there are now 3 floating point formats. In general, most > testing environments give "lip service" to floating point. I too continue to use TSO TEST for certain things, and indeed it would be a very good thing if they would add just a few little updates: Better floating point support, as you suggest Access register support 64-bit GPR support 64-bit indirection (the IPCS syntax would be consistent) TEST (and other TSO components) are extra frustrating because however dead-ended TSO may be, there *are* updates going on, but they never seem to take the opportunity to make minor enhancements while they have a module open for other purposes. Yeah, I know - internal politics, time & budget allocation, and so on. But most development labs manage to sneak in a few enhancements under the RADAR from time to time. Tony H. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
