History Lesson - CMS-2 anyone?

[Alex Quilici]

Has anyone out there ever programmed in a language called CMS-2?

It is supposed to have been (or is?) a Navy standard software language,
but a tour through our library didn't turn up any references to it.

I'm basically looking for someone to tell me what kind of language it is
(e.g. some sort of combination of COBOL/IMS combination, a variant of
IBM's old PL/S system's programming language, etc...) and who can point
me to some reference material on it.

--Alex

[Sean Case]

al...@wiliki.eng.hawaii.edu (Alex Quilici) writes:

>Has anyone out there ever programmed in a language called CMS-2?

Yes. Still do.

>It is supposed to have been (or is?) a Navy standard software language,
>but a tour through our library didn't turn up any references to it.

I'm not at all surprised.

>I'm basically looking for someone to tell me what kind of language it is
>(e.g. some sort of combination of COBOL/IMS combination, a variant of
>IBM's old PL/S system's programming language, etc...) and who can point
>me to some reference material on it.

It's a bit like JOVIAL... and a bit like nothing else on earth.

It's good at: laying out data structures in memory, getting close to the
machine (so long as it's a US Navy machine), and fixed-point arithmetic.

It's not so good at: portability and readability.

I don't have any materials or examples online. If enough people are
interested, I might try to get something more detailed together.

Sean Case
--
Sean Case g...@cairo.anu.edu.au

"What is it you want to be wrong about?" -- James Thurber