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From: kjm@ut-ngp.UUCP (Ken Montgomery)
Newsgroups: net.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: PASCAL as a system's programming language
Message-ID: <1172@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Jan-85 16:02:41 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.1172
Posted: Thu Jan 10 16:02:41 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Jan-85 06:29:06 EST
References: <252@harvard.ARPA> <193@ihu1m.UUCP>
Organization: U.Texas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
Lines: 44

[]
>Perhaps the nicest (in the sense of clean) thing about PASCAL
>is the way it bifurcates the universe of objects into pointers
>and pointees.

I've always thought that was one of its most *broken* features.
This bifurcation is ridiculous in the light of such C objects
as pointers to pointers.

> It is thus easier to debug monster programs
>with monster data structures than is the case with C.

Exactly contrary to my experience with ~1000 line programs.
(Not really monsters, but large enough for comparison
purposes...)

> Actually,
>all PASCAL needs to be a superior systems language to C is a
>casting operator,

No pointer arithmetic?  Or ability to take the address of a static
object?  ACK!  The ability to have static headers for linked-lists
in dynamic storage is one of the things I miss most in Pascal. 

> assuming the compiler knows how to optimize
>programming constructs like sequential array references.

I prefer a minimum of magic (like global optimizations; these
are an invitation to the compiler to mysteriously break programs).

>I can do without the demented precedence of logical operators,
>though.

Plus the fact that short-circuit evaluation is not required...

>ken perlow

--
The above viewpoints are mine. They are unrelated to
those of anyone else, including my cats and my employer.

Ken Montgomery  "Shredder-of-hapless-smurfs"
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