| OSS Pascal [message #268874] |
Mon, 03 March 1986 16:31 |
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Originally posted by: knnngt
<pre>
Article-I.D.: ukma.2785
Posted: Mon Mar 3 16:31:43 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Mar-86 05:25:33 EST
Reply-To: knnngt@ukma.UUCP (Alan Kennington)
Distribution: na
Organization: U of KY Mathematical Sciences
Lines: 60
********* Richard Mangeur de Lion - King of England (12th century) *****
The comments below were made upon first using the OSS Pascal
compiler. That was about a week ago. Since then I've found a couple of
things I am not entirely happy with. For instance, the "eoln" function
does not work in the same way as in normal Pascal. And there are one or two
aspects of the development cycle that are not quite deluxe. But overall, this
seems still to be by far the best way I know to write programs on the ST.
It is still a real pleasure to use it.
Comments on the OSS Pascal compiler:
Folks! This is one stunning compiler. A positive pleasure!!
I'm beside myself with amazement and delight. Chuck out your old Vaxes, folks.
Or use them as intelligent disk drives. Why suffer any longer with that
user-hostile junk? Perhaps I should try to calm down......
Just today I received OSS Pascal in the mail (1 week after ordering it,
costing $50.) The documentation stunned me. The best documentation I've seen
for micro, mini, or real computer compilers in 15 years of programming.
And then I gave it a test drive. It's just what I always wanted.
In the middle of editing, you just push [F9] to save,compile and
link (with optional maintenance of a backup of the last version, which
makes me homesick for VMS version numbers on the files.) Compare that to
mouldy old DRI C! It has standard Pascal plus all of the extensions that
any rational person would want. And the variations from the standard don't
require extensive reading of the documentation to convert old programs
(like the ST Basic, for instance). The editor is good, and well integrated
with the rest of the development process (merging files, storing portions,
moving to the compilation phase, indents, backup mode, search/replace,
insert/replace modes, etc.). To run an old VMS program from years ago,
I only had to change "varying" type to "string" type, and move the
filename definition for an input file from an "open" statement to the
"reset" statement - all very clearly and accurately explained in the manual.
And then it ran!!! There was once a time when languages were supposed to
be machine-independent. And this compiler brings a bit of that back to the ST.
(As opposed to Basic.)
The manual even tells how to interface to assembly language and
C (use of the stack, register usage etc.) And the compiler can be told
to use lower case function names preceded by underscores so as to be
compatible with DRI C. Bios, Xbios and Gemdos are accessed be function
number, which means the Atari documentation is prabably necessary, and
VDI/AES are called by almost the same names as in C, except that the two
seem to have been integrated here. The C routine appl_init seems to have been
replaced by init_gem, for instance.
Other things I like: underscores allowed in identifiers, identifier
names case-insensitive, a compiler directive to allocate stack/heap space,
lots of different optional runtime checks for stack overflow, range-checking,
pointer-range, an include directive etc. etc. The compiler will also name
the program .prg or .tos as required by the saved options file.
Using the .tos option, it's just like using the old Vax. And all of
the mouse/window stuff seems to be included in the runtime library.
I hope it isn't improper for me to write all of this. But I thought
some of you out there would like to know what you're missing.
Actually, I must admit that I would have liked to be able to mix
Pascal and assembly language freely, but you can specify in the saved
options file the list of code to be linked at link-time.
Incidentally, I am not biased or self-interested or doing anything else
of an underhand nature in writing all of this.
so long ............. Alan Kennington
knnngt@ukma.UUCP (or bitnet or something like that).
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