Lattice C for IBM Mainframes from SAS

[D Gary Grady]

The latest (Summer 1985) issue of SAS Communications announces that the
SAS Institute has determined that all future releases of SAS will be
written in C.  Hitherto, SAS had been written in a mix of PL/I and
FORTRAN and (more recently) in PL/I.  But the absence of a serious PL/I
compiler on the IBM PC led them to choose C as the development language
for the soon-to-be-shipped PC version, and (quoting the article)
"Development for the PC was so successful, that it was decided that all
future versions of the SAS System, regardless of hardware, would be
written in C.  That decision meant that a C compiler for mainframes was
needed."

The article continues, "Under an agreement with Lattice, Inc., SAS
Institute has developed an IBM mainframe version of the Lattice C
compiler and library."  The compiler is said to offer reentrant code,
optimization, use of extended (31-bit) addressing modes (AMODE) under
MVS/XA, and generation of identical code under OS and CMS.  Also
included are UNIX-style I/O, malloc, calloc, free, etc. and, of course,
a math library.  There is also a cross compiler that runs on the
mainframe and produces 8086 object code for the PC.

The native-code mainframe compiler is in beta test; the cross-compiler
is available immediately.  No pricing information is given, but if
you're interested or want to become a test site, the article says to
call (919) 467-8000, ext. 280.

I have no direct experience with this compiler, nor have I any
connection with the SAS Institute other than having programmed in SAS.
But there have been enough queries about the availability of C on IBM
mainframes that this sounds like a quite interesting development, and
one that stands to promote the use of C.
-- 
D Gary Grady
Duke U Comp Center, Durham, NC  27706
(919) 684-3695
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