SabreTalk

SabreTalk is a discontinued dialect of PL/I for the S/360 IBM mainframes running the TPF platform. SabreTalk was developed jointly by American Airlines, Eastern Air Lines and IBM. SabreTalk is known as PL/TPF (Programming Language for TPF).^[1]

SabreTalk programs still run in the British Airways Flight Operations system (FICO) under ALCS, using a commercially available automatic converter to translate SabreTalk programs to C programs. Both the Reservations and Operations Support System (OSS) of Delta Air Lines were developed using both SabreTalk and IBM 360 Assembler. Although development is currently restricted to C++, the majority of Delta's programming platform remained in Sabretalk until recently in the 2010s.

Because of the availability of translators^{[2] [3]} from SabreTalk to C and discontinued support by the original developers, several companies are beginning the move away from SabreTalk to purely C-based programs.

Code Sample:

 SAMPLE: PROCEDURE;  DECLARE ARRAY(10) DECIMAL(5) BASED(POINTUR);  DECLARE COUNTER BINARY(15) ALIGNED;  DECLARE TOTAL BINARY(31) ALIGNED;  START(POINTUR=#RG1); /* RECEIVE POINTER TO ARRAY IN REGISTER 1 */  TOTAL = 0;  LOOP:   DO COUNTER = 0 TO 10 BY 2;  TOTAL = TOTAL + ARRAY(COUNTER); /* TALLY EVEN NUMBERED ITEMS */  END LOOP;  IF TOTAL = 0 THEN /* VALUE OF TOTAL COMPUTED? */   ENTRC ERRO; /* N=CHECK VALIDITY IN PROG ERRO W/RETURN EXPECTED*/  BACKC(#RAC= TOTAL); /* BACK TO CALLING PROGRAM PASSING VALUE OF */  END SAMPLE; /* TOTAL IN REGISTER RAC. */ 

References

1. S. J. Hobson, "ALCS -- A High-Performance High-Availability DB/DC Monitor", p. 136 (footnote 2) in High Performance Transaction Systems, 2nd International Workshop, Asilomar Conference Center, Pacific Grove, California, USA, September 28-30, 1987, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 359, Springer 1989, ISBN 3-540-51085-0.
2. S. Dhinakar Jacob, Madhuchhanda Das, "TALK2C: A Tool for Automatic Migration," icpc, pp.288, 11th IEEE International Workshop on Program Comprehension (IWPC'03), 2003
3. Ira Baxter, "Approaches for Code Modernization", TPF Users Group meeting 2019

External links

• at the Wayback Machine (archived October 21, 2012)
• Robinson, Jeff (March 2001). (PDF). ACP/TPF Today. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 26, 2012.