I guess the best you can do for your future product updates is to ask your team to make sure they are always checking the latest edition of the PoOps manual when they are coding new changes.
Peter From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Mark Hammack Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2024 5:36 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: OPCODE tables Thanks for the reminder Peter. More curiosity than anything else. The product I support currently uses MACHINE(ARCH-10) in ASMAOPTS so that we can all but guarantee that any customer can run the software. With that said, I try to keep a current copy of PoOps on hand. Since the latest and greatest is -13 (revision 14), I know there are instructions that aren't supported at ARCH-10 (z12). I was really more interested in avoiding the "trial and error" approach to utilizing "new" instructions. We ran into the problem a few years back where one of our developers used some instruction (don't even remember which one now) that assembled clean with the HLASM defaults (OPTABLE(UNI)) but failed at a customer site. That's when we added ARCH-10. The issue hasn't come up since and I am probably the only member of the team crazy enough to even experiment with new instructions. This came to a head the other day when one of our other developers used an instruction that assumed (according to the latest PoOps) a doubleword boundary but his (very) outdated, private copy didn't say anything about it (honestly, it probably did, he just missed it). *Mark Hammack* On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 3:46 PM Farley, Peter < [email protected]> wrote: > Following up on my own reply to ask Mark: What is your goal/need? Just > curiosity, or do you have a project / task that needs this information? If > the latter, can you describe what you need? We may be able to help you > better if we know what you need. > > Peter > > From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List <[email protected]> On > Behalf Of Farley, Peter > Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2024 5:54 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: OPCODE tables > > PoOPS in the “Summary of Changes” sections usually have at least some > listing (in text format, nothing tablularized or easy to pick out) of > instructions added in each manual section, but sometimes those are > “generic” and don’t include all the variations of added instructions. > > The only way I can think of to accurately (more or less) track the > additions would be to extract the Appendix B instruction table that is in > OPCODE order to a text format file and then compare each edition’s table to > the prior edition’s table. > > I can say from personal experience that the “pdftotext” command-line > utility available from the XPDF project ( https://www.xpdfreader.com/ ) > (which is NOT the “pdftotext” version normally included in many linux > systems) for Windows execution works pretty well on most editions of PoOPS > once you use the right command-line parameters. Once extracted to pure > text the tables are at least in a manipulable form that a subsequent text > tool can massage into a format you can use for comparisons and extraction > of “differences”. > > But truthfully the OPTABLE lists are probably the easier solution. Just > run a separate assembly with each OPTABLE value and massage the output to > make the columns of instructions into one-line-per-instruction format and > you will be able to compare each generation to the next. SMOP, and (g)awk > or python would be a reasonable tool to do the text manipulation needed. > > Peter > > From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List <[email protected]> On > Behalf Of Mark Hammack > > Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2024 5:12 PM > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: OPCODE tables > > Is there a list somewhere (other than OPTABLE LIST) that shows which > instructions were added at each hardware level? > > I thought PoP used to have something similar but I don't see anything back > to Revision 7 (oldest copy I have). > -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system.
