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From: mlinar@poisson.usc.edu (Mitch Mlinar)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Turbo C/Pascal, debugging
Message-ID: <3256@oberon.USC.EDU>
Date: Tue, 7-Jul-87 14:55:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: oberon.3256
Posted: Tue Jul  7 14:55:14 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Jul-87 00:40:42 EDT
References: <719@imsvax.UUCP>
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Reply-To: mlinar@poisson.usc.edu.UUCP (Mitch Mlinar)
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles
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In article <719@imsvax.UUCP> paul@imsvax.UUCP (Paul Knight) writes:
>
>
>From my buddy Ted Holden
>
>  ......
>
>     What I like about Turbo Pascal, and I don't seem to be seeing these
>features in Turbo C, are the checks on system errors at run time.  A
>number of things which used to drive me batty using state-of-the-art
>Fortran compilers on mainframes never see the light of day in Turbo

I don't argue with the fact that Turbo Pascal has more error checking than
either Turbo C or Fortran.  HOWEVER, this is more a fundamental difference
between Pascal and C and NOT just a compiler nicety.

I suggest that Ted read both Wirth's book on Pascal and K&R C before
complaining about a problem that is specifically handled by both languages.
C, in its intent to run fast and small, DOES NOT automatically perform
array bound checking, divide-by-zero test, etc.  (It is often both run-time
and compiler dependent.)  IT IS NOT PART OF THE LANGUAGE.

Ted's comments are not that far off-base, but he should consider the
language before trashing (Turbo) C as no good.  One would expect Pascal to
be better at this; after all, it was written as a teaching language -
something that C is certainly not.

-Mitch