On Tuesday, 1994-10-11  Chris Mcbrien wrote to David Noon about
"C/Set++" as follows:

CM> A few short questions, if you don't mind:
CM>         Are there OS/2 versions of COBOL or PL/I?
CM>         Will hardware assited BCD be offered on PowerPC machines?

Hi Chris,

There is a 32-bit version of COBOL for OS/2. It is from MicroFocus and
it is very expensive.

There are one, two or three (depending on your point of view) 32-bit
versions of PL/I for OS/2. There is a very expensive version from
MicroFocus that more-or-less places a mainframe on your desktop. There
is IBM PL/I for OS/2, available in Professional Edition or Personal
Edition. All three of these compilers are closely related in their
development, since all the basic development was done by IBM Santa
Teresa and Toronto laboratories. The MicroFocus compiler has some
additional features (e.g. IMS interface) added by MicroFocus. All three
share the same object code generator/optimizer with IBM C Set ++.

If you plan on learning either COBOL or PL/I, I think you will find
PL/I's block structuring much closer to that of C/C++ than COBOL's
"blob" structuring is. You will find a C-to-PL/I transition much easier
and, IMHO, much more rewarding than a C-to-COBOL transition. But then
you can never have too many strings for your bow.

I don't know for sure if the PowerPC will have BCD hardware, but I
think it is highly probable that it will. The Motorola CPU's/NPU's have
usually been better than Intel's and Intel have had BCD hardware
instructions for some years now.

Regards

Dave

 * KWQ/2 1.2g * When it comes to paradigms, shift happens...

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