© Digital Equipment Corporation 1996
All Rights Reserved.
This manual defines the requirements, mechanisms, and conventions used in the Digital UNIX interface that supports procedure calls for Digital UNIX on Alpha systems.
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About This Manual
This manual defines the requirements, mechanisms, and conventions
used in the Digital
UNIX (R) interface that supports procedure calls for Digital UNIX
for Alpha systems. The standard defines the data structures, constants,
algorithms, conventions, methods, and functional interfaces that enable a
native user-mode procedure to operate correctly in a multilanguage and multithreaded
environment on Digital UNIX systems operating on Alpha hardware.
Audience
Although this manual primarily defines requirements for compiler and
debugger writers, the information applies to procedure calling for all programmers
at all levels of programming.
Chapter 1 | Introduces the standard and provides definitions of terms used in the standard. |
Chapter 2 | Describes the fundamental concepts of the Digital UNIX calling standard for Alpha systems. |
Chapter 3 | Describes the aspects of the standard that deal with flow control. |
Chapter 4 | Discusses the passing and storage of data. |
Chapter 5 | Discusses how the standard relates to events outside the normal program flow. |
Chapter 6 | Discusses stack limit checking in multithreaded execution environments. |
Chapter 7 | Describes the mechanisms for functions that are needed to support procedure call tracing. |
Chapter 8 | Discusses procedure descriptors. |
The following documents contain information related to this standard
and the standards mentioned in the previous list:
The printed version of the Digital UNIX documentation set is color
coded to help specific
audiences quickly find the books that meet their needs. (You can order
the printed documentation from Digital.) This color
coding is reinforced with the use of an icon on the spines of books.
The following list describes this convention:
Related Documents
This Digital UNIX calling standard is a component of the larger Alpha
Software Architecture and depends on standards and conventions not described
in this document. These standards include:
Audience | Icon | Color Code |
---|---|---|
General users | G | Blue |
System and network administrators | S | Red |
Programmers | P | Purple |
Device driver writers | D | Orange |
Reference page users | R | Green |
Some books in the documentation set help meet the needs of several audiences. For example, the information in some system books is also used by programmers. Keep this in mind when searching for information on specific topics.
The Documentation Overview, Glossary, and Master Index provides information on all of the books in the Digital UNIX documentation set.
You can send your comments in the following ways:
A Reader's Comment form is located on line in the following location:
Please include the following information along with your comments:
The Digital UNIX Publications group cannot respond to system problems or
technical support inquiries. Please address technical questions to your
local system vendor or to the appropriate Digital technical support office.
Information provided with the software media explains how to send problem
reports to Digital.
The following presentation conventions apply to this standard:
Constants are represented symbolically with their values given at the
point of definition in the standard. Data structures are defined in terms
of the physical memory format of each structure. Functional interface syntax
is presented in abstract form. Concrete language bindings for each constant,
data structure, and functional interface are provided in system definition
files external to the standard.
Algorithms are presented as a series of steps in standard American English.
All numbers are represented as decimal values unless otherwise indicated.
Nondecimal numbers are represented with the base name in parentheses following
the number, for example, 1B(hex).
Figures that represent memory or register layouts follow the convention
that increasing addresses run from top to bottom and right to left. The most
significant bits are on the left; the least significant bits are on the right.
All code examples are supplied to clarify the concept under discussion.
These examples do not necessarily reflect the optimized or properly scheduled
code sequences that a compiler would generate. The assembly language syntax
follows the conventions used in the Digital UNIX Assembly Language
Programmer's Guide.
Record fields are referred to by using the name of the record or subrecord
followed by a dot (\.) and then the field name:
record-name.subrecord-name.field
Reader's Comments
Digital welcomes any comments and suggestions you have on this and other
Digital UNIX manuals.
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Conventions
This document uses the following typographical and symbol conventions:
cat
(1)cat
(1)
indicates that you can find information on the cat
command in Section 1 of the reference pages.