OK, so Mark W. wrote :

> Wow Mark,
>
> Which version of MPE did these commands appear in? I've never heard of
any of
> them and I've been MPE-ing for over 18 years now...

Same for me. I admit I am sort of flabbergasted by these commands ;-), even
after my own 18 years on MPE boxes.

> Mark W.
> SPE.
>
> PS. Does anyone remember using ALLOCATE to hold commonly used programs in
memory
> on classic machines? This is about as obscure as I get. I bet a lot of
people
> out there still do this. <g> I also remember writing my first VIEW
program by
> copying the COBOL source for ENTRY and inserting IMAGE calls at the
appropriate
> places.

Ah, the good ole' times of :ALLOCATE and :AUTOALLOCATE !!! Ah, these CPU-
and memory-hogged Classics !!!

IIRC, :ALLOCATE was designed to create and maintain system table entries
for programs and their associated SL segments, even when they were not
used. More specifically, it maintained entries in the following tables :

CSTBK, CST Block, a set of pointers into the XCST
XCST, eXtended Code Segment Table, the list of segments for program files
CST, Code Segment Table, the list of SL segments
... and a fourth one that I have long forgotten (Loader Segment Table ?)!!!

See, ALLOCATE/AUTOALLOCATE did not really maintain the PROGRAMS themselves
in memory, just their system table entries, thuis saving many CPU cycles
when loading frequently used programs.

AUTOALLOCATE merely automated the process by ALLOCATEing each program that
was accessed by :RUN. And there was :SHOWALLOCATE, too, which is pretty
straightforward.

I'm pretty sure that someone else with experience with MPE V/E on Classics
can add a lot to this. Last time I've seen a Classic was about 5 years ago.
AFAIK, ALLOCATE does not do anything on MPE/iX.

Christian