Proposal for a FAP Language Debugging Program

Abstract

A time-sharing system for the 7090 computer is being developed at the M.I.T. Computation Center whereby many users can communicate simultaneously with the computer through individual consoles. In the time-sharing system a time-sharing supervisor (TSS) program directs the running of each user's program in such a manner that each user's program is run in short bursts of computation. The effect is that the user sitting at his console has complete control over his program with unrestricted use of a large computing machine. Through the use of commands in the time-sharing system a user who writes a program in the FAP language can assemble his program, load it into core, and start the program. In order to make the most use of the time-sharing facility the user during the debugging stages of his program will want to dynamically monitor his running program and make changes as necessary. The proposed FAP language debugging program gives the user the facility to communicate with his program using the symbols defined within his program.