Subj : Short executables
To   : Eddy Thilleman
From : David Noon
Date : Mon Jan 29 2001 12:58 pm

Hi Eddy,

Replying to a message of Eddy Thilleman to David Noon:

 DN>> HWORLD.ASM  OS/2 32-bit command line program.

 ET> Hmm, maybe I'll try to assemble this, does TASM do the job?

That depends on which TASM you have. If it supports .MODEL FLAT then you are in 
luck. Just remeber to link the object code using LINK386.EXE or ILINK.EXE.

 ET> I don't
 ET> have a real OS/2 assembler, where would I find a decent one? I can
 ET> vaguely remember ALP, does that ring a bell?

ALP is the IBM assembler for OS/2. It is bundled with the OS/2 Warp Developer's 
Toolkit 4.0 and the OS/2 Device Driver Kit 4.0. The latter can be downloaded 
from one of IBM's Web sites.

If you can find a copy of Watcom C/C++ then you will get a copy of WASM, which 
is also an OS/2 assembler. Just be aware that the Watcom linker was very flakey 
in the 11.0 releases, but quite good in the 10.x releases.

 DN>> Another approach would be to change the memory model from FLAT to
 DN>> SMALL [after all, this is a 32-bit, native OS/2 program] which will
 DN>> reduce the size of some of the instructions. This is left to the
 DN>> student as an exercise. ... :-)

 ET> Yet another approach would be to do it in REXX or in a batch file,
 ET> they have the same functionality (display a small message) and are
 ET> smaller. ;-))

But that requires that the command shell and, in the former case, REXX 
interpreter be loaded, so its memory footprint is a couple of hundred kilobytes 
larger.

Regards

Dave
<Team PL/I>

--- FleetStreet 1.25.1
 * Origin: My other computer is an IBM S/390 (2:257/609.5)

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