Puneet Varma (Editor)

SabreTalk

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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).

SabreTalk programs are still running in the British Airways Flight Operations system (FICO), although a commercially available automatic converter is being used 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 translator from SabreTalk to C and because it is no longer supported 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

SabreTalk Wikipedia