Date   : Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:11:53 +0100
From   : kortink@... (John Kortink)
Subject: Tube - I/O processor memory questions

On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:28:57 +0000, Kevin Bracey
<kevin@...> wrote:

>John Kortink wrote:
>> On Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:34:55 +0000, Kevin Bracey
>> <kevin@...> wrote:
>>
>>   
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> Well, it could have used the necessary OSWORD 5/6s. Didn't seem /that/ 
>>> far-fetched to me having just spent ages faffing around using them 
>>> trying to get my command-line across the Tube. (Or are you going to tell 
>>> me that the command-line is automatically copied across in some way I've 
>>> missed?)
>>>     
>>
>> If you mean a regular OSCLI call : well, yeah. 
>Sorry, I meant from the point of view of a language trying to access its 
>launching command-line.

Ah. Ok ...

>You have to make OSWORD 5/6 calls to access 
>&FFFF00F2 and &FFFF00F3 directly, then go on to make more OSWORD 5/6 
>calls to find what they point to. Bleh. Can't see a neater solution, and 
>indeed that's what EDIT does (I checked just to reassure myself I wasn't 
>missing something).
>
>OSARGS 1,0 is no use, as it only works if you're run from a filing 
>system, so only works for a HIxxxx or xxxx language loaded from disc on 
>a copro, not for a HIxxxx or xxxx resident in ROM, and such images can 
>normally be used in either way. I do have a definitely-disc-based 
>xxxx128 build of what I'm doing that could use it, but not sure it's 
>worth the conditional assembly grief to save a few bytes on that version.
>
>Really annoying. I guess languages that needed to parse their 
>command-line were never that common, so not much attention was paid to 
>making it easy.

I can't remember it ever being used.

If the language boots from ROM using a *-command, the
*-command should probably relay any parameters to the
language in its own specific way. Using &F2/F3 (which
probably requires re-scanning the commandline to find
the parameters) sounds like an afterthought to me.


John Kortink

-- 

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