<on a proper CISC architecture like the VAX it should surely be possible
<to generate position independent code without the help of extra tables?
<At least it could be done on the PDP-11. Heck, it didn't even HAVE
<an absolute addressing mode, just autoincrement PC deferred ;-)

Since vax is a superset of PDP-11 position independent code is a natural
result of that. By all expereinces it would be an expected code form.

However, I cannot speak for the C compiler as it could be braindead and
produces non-PIC code.  Even then I'd expect that to be resolved at 
compile time.

With all that said shared libraries are a whole different set of worms.

Allison