pTAL Reference Manual (H06.03+)

Introduction to pTAL

HP pTAL Reference Manual—523746-005

1-7

System Procedures

The file system treats all devices as files, including disk files, disk packs, terminals,

printers, and programs running on the system. File-system procedures provide a

file-access method that lets you ignore the peculiarities of devices. Your program can

refer to a file by the file’s symbolic name without knowing the physical address or

configuration status of the file.

Your program can call system procedures that activate and terminate programs

running on any processor on the system, and can also call system procedures that

monitor the operation of a running program or processor. If the monitored program

stops or a processor fails, your program can determine this fact.

For more information about system procedures see:

•

Guardian Procedure Calls Reference Manual

•

Guardian Programmer’s Guide

pTAL and the CRE

pTAL does not have a run-time environment defined by a run-time library such as HP C

and HP COBOL. The CRE provides a common foundation for language-specified run-

time libraries that enables mixed-language programming.

A program with a pTAL main routine cannot run in the CRE because pTAL does not

perform the necessary initialization of the run-time environment. pTAL routines can run

in the CRE if they are called from a program with an HP C main routine. There are

additional restrictions on what operations can be performed in the pTAL routines. For

complete details on writing pTAL routines that run in the CRE, see the CRE

Programmer’s Guide.