TAL Programmer's Guide

About This Manual
096254 Tandem Computers Incorporated xxvii
Organization of Manual The TAL Programmer’s Guide is organized as follows:
Section 1, “Introducing TAL,” summarizes the features of TAL.
Section 2, “Getting Started,” explains how to create, compile, and run a program.
Section 3, “Structuring Programs,” describes how to structure source programs.
Section 4, “Introducing the Environment,” describes the process environment,
addressing modes, and storage allocation.
Section 5, “Using Expressions,” describes arithmetic and conditional expressions.
Section 6, “Using Simple Variables,” explains how to declare and access simple
variables and how the compiler allocates storage for them.
Section 7, “Using Arrays,” explains how to declare and access arrays and how the
compiler allocates storage for them.
Section 8, “Using Structures,” explains how to declare and access structures and how
the compiler allocates storage for them.
Section 9, “Using Pointers,” explains how to declare and access simple pointers and
structure pointers and how the compiler allocates storage for them.
Section 10, “Using Equivalenced Variables,” explains how to declare and access
equivalenced variables.
Section 11, “Using Procedures,” gives information about procedures and
subprocedures.
Section 12, “Controlling Program Flow,” explains control statements.
Section 13, “Using Special Expressions,” describes assignment, CASE, IF, and group
comparison expressions.
Section 14, “Compiling Programs,” describes some of the compilation options.
Section 15, “Compiler Listing,” describes the output generated by the compiler.
Section 16, “Running and Debugging Programs,” shows how to run and debug
programs.
Section 17, “Mixed-Language Programming,” describes TAL mixed-language features,
TAL and C guidelines, and Common Run-Time Environment (CRE) guidelines for
TAL.
Appendix A, “Sample Programs,” shows sample programs.
Appendix B, “Managing Addressing,” gives guidelines for managing addressing,
particularly in explicit (user-allocated) extended data segments.
Appendix C, “Improving Performance,” gives guidelines for improving execution
performance.
Appendix D, “ASCII Character Set,” describes the ASCII character set.