Re: ASSIST Assembler and HLASM

[408-463-3543 T/543- <ehrman@stlvm27.vnet.ibm.com>]

On Tue, 19 Nov 2013 05:41:17 -0600, Don Higgins <d...@HIGGINS.NET>
commented:

> Hercules is a hardware emulator which emulates of entire OS
> such as MVS 3.8 as well as HLASM assembler for 3.8.

I trust that Don was referring to "HLASM assembler for 3.8."
as a generic term for the MVS 3.8 assembler, and not the true
"High Level Assembler for z/OS, z/VM, and z/VSE."

Anyone who has ported or otherwise copied HLASM to Hercules is
violating its license agreement, and could possibly face legal
action by IBM.

John Ehrman

[Paul Gilmartin]

I believe the operant word is "emulates". I know of at least
two ISVs who supply functional equivalents of HLASM, perhaps
not at the latest level. (No, I won't rat them out, but one
has been a regular and open contributor to ASSEMBLER-LIST.)

z390, mentioned several times in IBM-MAIN this week is an
Open Source alternative. I don't know that it plays at all
with Hercules.

-- gil

[Jon Perryman]

z390 is great for those of us who use MVS 3.8. It's a more robust assembler than with MVS 3.8. Some differences but nothing you can't work around. I use the MVS380 which has several of the 390 instructions available. It's nice to be able to use relative instructions and some of the newer instructions even though it's MVS 3.8.

Jon Perryman.

>________________________________
> From: Paul Gilmartin <PaulGB...@aim.com>
>To: ASSEMBL...@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2013 8:03 PM
>Subject: Re: ASSIST Assembler and HLASM

[Don Higgins]

John, all

Yes, I was really referring to the mainframe assembler that came with MVS
3.8 which is not HLASM. I believe the MVS 3.8 assembler only supported 24
bit addressing like MVS 3.8. I've never really used Hercules so I'm not
certain.

z390 supports 32 bit addressing, and is designed to be HLASM compatible
although there are exceptions such as the use of ASCII source files and no
support for double byte characters.

Don Higgins
d...@higgins.net
www.don-higgins.net

[Dave]

On 21/11/2013 20:26, Don Higgins wrote:
> John, all
>
> Yes, I was really referring to the mainframe assembler that came with MVS
> 3.8 which is not HLASM. I believe the MVS 3.8 assembler only supported 24
> bit addressing like MVS 3.8. I've never really used Hercules so I'm not
> certain.

That is correct, the assembler that comes with MVS 3.8 is the IBM
Assembler XF, and this assembler was also supplied VM and DOS. This is a
complete re-write of the Assembler F which came with MVT. There is also
Assembler "G" which consists of modifications to Assembler F. I am not
sure when Assembler H appeared but thats the pre-cursor to the modern
HLASM.

> z390 supports 32 bit addressing, and is designed to be HLASM compatible
> although there are exceptions such as the use of ASCII source files and no
> support for double byte characters.

wasn't HLASM originally Assembler H with the SLAC modification...
> Don Higgins
> d...@higgins.net
> www.don-higgins.net
Dave

[Tony Harminc]

On 21 November 2013 15:58, Dave <dave....@gmail.com> wrote:
> That is correct, the assembler that comes with MVS 3.8 is the IBM
> Assembler XF, and this assembler was also supplied VM and DOS. This is a
> complete re-write of the Assembler F which came with MVT. There is also
> Assembler "G" which consists of modifications to Assembler F. I am not
> sure when Assembler H appeared but thats the pre-cursor to the modern
> HLASM.

Curiously enough, ASMH preceded Assembler XF by some years. It was
resurrected much later (V2) mainly because XF was unable to process
the hugely complex macros used for MVS/XA sysgen. Well, that's the
external view; doubtless there were other IBM politics in play, as
always.

Tony H.

[John Ehrman]

Dave <dave....@gmail.com> noted:

<...>
<quote> That is correct, the assembler that comes with MVS 3.8 is the IBM

Assembler XF, and this assembler was also supplied VM and DOS. This is a
complete re-write of the Assembler F which came with MVT. There is also
Assembler "G" which consists of modifications to Assembler F. I am not
sure when Assembler H appeared but thats the pre-cursor to the modern

HLASM. </quote>

Assembler H appeared internally around 1970-71; as IBM was moving toward
doing development with the predecessors of PL/X management tried to kill
it, but it was so popular with IBM's field staff (they could do a SYSGEN in
an afternoon rather than a weekend) that it was eventually made into a
program product (the first, I believe). Assembler G came from the
University of Waterloo, and Assembler XF was developed at the IBM lab in
Lidingo, Sweden.

<quote> wasn't HLASM originally Assembler H with the SLAC modification...
</quote>

HLASM adopted many of the SLAC mods (with enhancements, of course!) and
added a vast number of additional new features.

John Ehrman

[Lloyd Fuller]

Most if not all of the people at SHARE that were involved in writing the requirements that resulted in HLASM were users of HASM with the SLAC mods.  We tried to pick the most commonly used features for the highest priority requirements and in some cases, we modified the way that we wanted things to work to get around issues that several of us had found with the SLAC mods.
 
And in a few cases, the requirements ended up being rejected by IBM, but most of them were implemented including some that we were not sure could be.  In addition, some of our requirements that were initially rejected became part of the HLASM Toolkit like the structured programming MACROs.
 
Thanks John.
 
Lloyd
Lloyd Fuller
former member of the SHARE Assembler committee

>________________________________
> From: John Ehrman <ehr...@us.ibm.com>
>To: ASSEMBL...@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Sent: Friday, November 22, 2013 3:00 PM

>Subject: Re: ASSIST Assembler and HLASM
>
>

[Capps, Joey]

I am currently out of the office.
I will return Monday 12/2

Dan Smith will be acting in my place:
Dan Smith
COE Owner for DataReplication |
Team Lead, Principal Subject Matter Expert |
GCS for PowerExchange and DataReplication
Email: dsm...@informatica.com<mailto:dsm...@informatica.com>
Office: +1.512.795.6988


Thanks,
Joey