Construction of a General Purpose Command Language for Use in Computer Dialog

摘要

Two computer programs were developed and implemented to enable intercommunication between a Data General NOVA/ECLIPSE computer system and another modem linked computer system. One program, called TTERMOP, allows a user to sit at a NOVA terminal and interact with a connected system in a transparent mode. The other program, called MONITOR, is a command language interpreter that examines and executes instructions contained within an action file. An action file, consisting of instruction strings and associated control parameters, is designed to be dependent upon a connected system with regard to contents, yet independent of such a connected system with regard to structure and format. The interpreter is written in FORTRAN IV with FORTRAN and assembly language modules. Actual implementation of the programs is accomplished between the NOVA/ECLIPSE and the Aeronautical Systems Division Control Data CYBER computer system. ASCII data files between 20 and 35,000 bytes have been transferred between the two interconnected systems, each transfer initiated by a single string command acceptable to the interpreter and compatible with a tailored action file for the CYBER system. The programs were designed to be flexible enough for use with several different connected systems, and general enough to be hosted on a system other than the NOVA/ECLIPSE.