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Shalom ha-Ashkenaz, 1998/06/18 CE

RE: FreeMUMPS and its source code files

Shalom!

Someone set out to purchase all MUMPS vendors. What is good for Terry
may not be good for the traditional MUMPS community.

MUMPS is fun. MUMPS is OPEN. MUMPS puts YOU in control of affairs.

Somebody is monopolising MUMPS, is cache-ing MUMPS.

So we need a FreeMUMPS, i.e. something even Terry-Bill cannot buy!

Here are files of a preliminary version of FreeMUMPS.

I put them in the hands of MUG with the following guidelines:

1) The aim of the project is to make available FreeMUMPS to
everybody (even private use for Terry shall be granted :-).

2) As long as there is no manual (preferably in the English language)
available to the public and as long as there is an unresolved list
of known problems, FreeMUMPS is ***NOT*** to be made available to
the general public. Let lousy products be the privilege of MS-Bill.

3) MUG may forward FreeMUMPS at this stage to individuals
or to non-profit organizations who volunteer to contribute to the
project. When there is a manual (TeX or LaTeX recommended!, HTML is
not bad either) and when a MUG task force declares
FreeMUMPS free of known problems then FreeMUMPS is to be made
available to the general public.

4) FreeMUMPS is not to be placed under the GNU General Public Licence.
Anybody who wants to produce a proprietary product with parts of
FreeMUMPS is free to do so: Either with FreeMUMPS as part of
application programs or with FreeMUMPS as the basis of a new
commercial MUMPS implementation. However, who passes FreeMUMPS
or products based on it, must inform the recipient of the
FreeMUMPS Copyright, and he has to provide the FreeMUMPS
source codes without additional charges.

5) Everybody passing FreeMUMPS or products based on it should encourage
the recipient to join in a MUMPS Users Group of her choice.

6) Current FreeMUMPS runs under LINUX and under SCO-UNIX. Minor modifications
may be needed to make it compile & run under other Unixes. A Windows-98 or
Windows-NT Version is desirable. char is "signed char".
under SCO-UNIX you call it with "mumps.sco"
under LINUX you call it with "mumps.linux"
use mcc and mutil to compile FreeMUMPS and associated untilities.

Unresolved List of Known Problems in FreeMUMPS:

- no manual
main features in a nutshell:
,,standard'' MUMPS
255 char max string length
no controls in global subscripts
$C(129) is EOL = EndOfLine character, cannot be used
$C(130) is subscript delimiter, cannot be used
$V(17) non standard intrinsic commands
za zb zd zg zh zi zj zl zn zp zq zr zs zt zw
zallocate zbreak zdeallocate zgo zhalt zinsert zjob
zload znew zprint zquit zremove zsave ztrap zwrite
with VIEW 17 you can remove items from this list
use of a non standard command that is not in this list
is processed as a user defined command. "ZFOO argument"
is processed as
XECUTE "NEW % SET %=argument DO ^%zfoo"

$V(18) non standard intrinsic functions
zb zc zd ze zh zht zk zl zm zn zo zr zs zt
zboolean zcall zcr zcrc zdata zdate zedit zhorolog
zkey zlength zlsd zname znext zorder zpiece
zprevious zreplace zsyntax zsort ztime
with VIEW 18 you can remove items from this list
use of a non standard function that is not in this list
is processed as a user defined function. "$ZFOO(argument)"
is processed as "$$^%Zfoo(argument)"

$V(19) non standard intrinsic special variables
za zb zc zd ze zf zh zi zj zl zn zo zp zr zs zt zv
zcontrolc zdate zerror zname zhorolog zinrpt zjob
zlocal zorder zprecision zsystem ztime ztr ztrap
zreference zversion
with VIEW 19 you can remove items from this list

routines are stored as LINUX files with extension ".mps"
use $V(98) for inspection; VIEW 98 to change this

globals are stored as LINUX files with prefix "^" and
with no extension
use $V(96),$V(97) for inspection; VIEW 96,97 to change this

use SET $H (with root permissions!) to set the system date/time
use $V(99) and VIEW 99 to set an offset on $H for the current
job only. This is of tremendous value for date dependend tests (Y2K!).

%-Routines and %-Globals reside in /usr/lib/mumps. All other routines
reside in the current directory (There is no UCI).
change/inspect this with VIEW/$VIEW 3 through 8.

see views.c to see more features to customize FreeMUMPS.

there is no explicit limit on the size of routines, local symbol table,
globals (but it can be controlled via VIEW/$VIEW).

! shell escape
!< shell escape with output to %-array
!> shell escape with input from % array
!! shell escape afer HALTing FreeMUMPS
***manual should be produced with TeX or LaTeX***

on startup the routine login.mps is executed. Unless this HALTS,
programmer mode (directmode) is entered on termination of login.mps

,,utilites'' are not needed, as there in a convenient way to call
LINUX utilies from with FreeMUMPS

Database errors can be diagnosed with fix/gvalidate. They can be
repaired with grestore.

- accuracy of power operator (**) with non-integer exponents needs
careful evaluation.

- accuracy of division may be controlled with $ZPRECISION, but
is not clean.

- local variable module handles arrays inefficiently.

- call by reference has a problem: if the formal name and the
actual name differ, all action should be visible under both
names, with the exception of the NEW command. FreeMUMPS does
not honor this exception.

- $QUERY with negative second argument returns wrong results.
$ORDER with arbitrary second argument (intexpr) is OK.

- standard error handling not implemented. So far only traditional
non-standard error handling with SET $ZTRAP="entryref"

- transaction processing not implemented. But probably it is not
possible to do so in an efficient manner.

- MERGE, KVALUE, KDATA not implemented

- ssvn not implemented, but hook in expr.c included.

- &sql{} binding, OMI, MWAPI, GKS binding not implemented.

- extentions for values (i.e. number+unit) so far only implemented
for CURRENCY with the official conversion rates for the currencies of
the euro club.
try IF 1DEM<1EUR WRITE 1DEM+.5EUR WRITE 10EUR#2ATS

- there are restrictions in the use of characters. Printable ASCII
are OK. ASCII-Controls cannot be used in global subscripts.
Otherwise all 7-bit chars are O.K.
Strings in LINUX are delimited with $C(0). $C(0) is no problem. But
$C(129) -lowest possible value in signed chars- is used as EOL =
End_Of_Line symbol in FreeMUMPS strings. $C(130) is internally used
as a separator in subscripts of (local/global) arrays. All other
values may be used ( control this with VIEW/$VIEW 80)
it is desirable to change FreeMUMPS either to use unsigned chars
with $C(254) as DELIMiter in subscripts and $C(255) as EOL. Or
even better: Instead of defining a string as a sequence of characters
being terminated by a certain char, a better implentasion uses a counter
plus a number of arbitrary (UNICODE?) chars.

- VIEW/$VIEW should be retired completely. All functionality currently
using VIEW should be changed to ssvn.

- UNICODE should be adopted as the internal character set.

- if COLOR is made undefined /* commented in mpsdef0 */ FreeMUMPS
works under SCO-UNIX, but it crashes immediately under LINUX.
Therefore let it compile with COLOR defined, even if LINUX does
not honor the color codes meant for scounix.

Have much fun, get involved with FreeMUMPS, and do not forget
to observe Sabbath Kaddish,

Yours,

Shalom ha-Ashkenaz

Filenames under MS-DOS are uppercase only.
For use under unix -> please rename

COPYRIGH 1322 11.01.99 14:51 -> COPYRIGHT
README 8198 11.01.99 16:26
BENCH MPS 1567 11.01.99 14:51 -> bench.mps
COMPACT C 9324 11.01.99 14:51 -> compact.c
EXPR C 109452 11.01.99 14:52 -> expr.c
FIX 6024 11.01.99 14:52 -> fix
FIX C 6334 11.01.99 14:53 -> fix.c
GCOMPACT 30400 11.01.99 14:53 -> gcompact
GL 6700 11.01.99 14:53 -> gl
GL C 8335 11.01.99 14:53 -> gl.c
GLOBAL C 68467 11.01.99 14:54 -> global.c
GRESTORE 30128 11.01.99 14:54 -> grestore
GVALIDAT 7976 11.01.99 14:54 -> gvalidate
LOCKS 4820 11.01.99 14:54 -> locks
LOCKS C 7562 11.01.99 14:54 -> locks.c
LOGIN MPS 135 11.01.99 14:54 -> login.mps
MCC 554 11.01.99 14:54 -> mcc
MPS MAK 1186 11.01.99 14:59 -> mps.make
MPSDEF 18076 11.01.99 14:59 -> mpsdef
MPSDEF0 9908 11.01.99 14:59 -> mpsdef0
MUMPS C 45641 11.01.99 15:00 -> mumps.c
MUMPS LIN 215296 11.01.99 15:01 -> mumps.linux
MUMPS SCO 224480 11.01.99 15:02 -> mumps.scounix
MUTIL 953 11.01.99 15:02 -> mutil
OPERATOR C 45021 11.01.99 15:03 -> operator.c
RESTORE C 8674 11.01.99 15:03 -> restore.c
SERVICE C 97693 11.01.99 15:04 -> service.c
STRINGS C 2477 11.01.99 15:04 -> strings.c
SYMTAB C 39881 11.01.99 15:04 -> symtab.c
VALIDATE C 13897 11.01.99 15:04 -> validate.c
VIEWS C 45765 11.01.99 15:05 -> views.c
XECLINE C 78992 11.01.99 15:06 -> xecline.c
</pre>

Original README from Shalom ha-Ashkenaz - Revision history

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