From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] Re: Plan9 Programming languages ! -- PASCAL? From: forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="upas-ugrpkgxqxyzdrgwkdaiwmscuqy" Message-Id: <20011212224410.2A437199BB@mail.cse.psu.edu> Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 22:43:58 +0000 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 345b9152-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --upas-ugrpkgxqxyzdrgwkdaiwmscuqy Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit it was intended -- and used -- for more than just teaching, but unfortunately even the ISO Standard Pascal language does not provide portable ways of accessing system functions of post-mainframe operating systems (even interactive i/o might not be provided). consequently there are a great many dialects and specialised extensions. Standard Pascal is a small language that is fairly easy to implement though. on the other hand, ISO Extended Pascal still doesn't provide portable ways of doing many of the things missing from Standard Pascal either, but it's not small. It began as a simple and achievable standards committee project to add 4 or 5 obvious and simple extensions to Standard Pascal, to address the most common portability problems (opening an external file named interactively, for instance), but it took on a life of its own. (i bequeathed my copy of the resulting huge stack of paper to the university when i left.) --upas-ugrpkgxqxyzdrgwkdaiwmscuqy Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Disposition: inline Return-Path: <9fans-admin@cse.psu.edu> Received: from punt-1.mail.demon.net by mailstore for forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk id 1008193896:10:05998:0; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 21:51:36 GMT Received: from psuvax1.cse.psu.edu ([130.203.4.6]) by punt-1.mail.demon.net id aa1005823; 12 Dec 2001 21:51 GMT Received: from psuvax1.cse.psu.edu (psuvax1.cse.psu.edu [130.203.30.6]) by mail.cse.psu.edu (CSE Mail Server) with ESMTP id CF79019A06; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 16:51:07 -0500 (EST) Delivered-To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Received: from plan9.cs.bell-labs.com (ampl.com [204.178.31.2]) by mail.cse.psu.edu (CSE Mail Server) with SMTP id F2DE7199ED for <9fans@cse.psu.edu>; Wed, 12 Dec 2001 16:50:52 -0500 (EST) To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] Re: Plan9 Programming languages ! -- PASCAL? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <20011212215052.F2DE7199ED@mail.cse.psu.edu> Sender: 9fans-admin@cse.psu.edu Errors-To: 9fans-admin@cse.psu.edu X-BeenThere: 9fans@cse.psu.edu X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.7 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu List-Help: List-Id: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans.cse.psu.edu> List-Archive: Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 16:50:47 -0500 > > Why? What use would it be? > > Writting software ! What * use * else... I've never found Pascal to be particularly useful for writing software. I understand that it was originally intended for teaching purposes, but there are some tasks which are so difficult to do correctly with Pascal that you have to learn how to program again when you start using a real language, like C. And then there's Basic... --upas-ugrpkgxqxyzdrgwkdaiwmscuqy--