Of my suggestion that this instruction be used to locate the rightmost
non-blank in input text Peter Farley wrote
>
> Useful, yes. CPU efficient, not.
>
The TRTR is a relatively new instruction, and I should be prepared to stipulate
that it is now slower than constructs that use CLCs in loops.
I doubt that it will remain so, but that is not my point here.
The use of a TRTR is here more perspicuous; and attempts to replace single
millicode-based instructions with loops of older hardware ones are, I think,
perverse. A good programming style, like a good prose style, is preoccupied
with lucidity, force, and ease, and not with this sort of thing.
On, say, a millisecond IBM 650 they made some sense; on a nanosecond
zArchitecture machine they make none. Retreating into the familiar is easy,
too easy. Attention to such 'problems' just does not help to give this
platform a future.
John Gilmore Ashland, MA 01721-1817 USA
