Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uoregon!lth
From: lth@uoregon.uoregon.edu (Lars Thomas Hansen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: standard pascal
Summary: Turbo Pascal is not Standard Pascal
Message-ID: <4992@uoregon.uoregon.edu>
Date: 29 Jun 89 02:23:17 GMT
References: <4757@freja.diku.dk> <2039@hub.ucsb.edu>
Reply-To: lth@drizzle.UUCP (Lars Thomas Hansen)
Organization: University of Oregon, Computer Science, Eugene OR
Lines: 23

In article <2039@hub.ucsb.edu> acm9@apple.UUCP (Mike O'Brien) writes:
>In article <4757@freja.diku.dk> dat0@freja.diku.dk (Dat-0 undervisningsassistent) writes:
>>Since we are about to switch from CP/M-computers to MS-DOS-computers, I was
>>wondering if there exist a truly standard Pascal-compiler running on 
>>MS-DOS-computers on the market. 
>
>I think everyone would agree that Borland International's "Turbo Pascal" is 
>the current standard in MS-DOS. 

Turbo Pascal is by nobody's standard a Standard Pascal. It lacks parts of 
Standard Pascal (notably put() and get() and file windows), and it expands
on the language in many (admittedly extremely useful) ways. It can be used
to write most Standard Pascal programs in a portable manner, though it is
not common to do so.

If you are looking for a Standard Pascal, I would not recommend Turbo Pascal.

As a matter of fact, it may be wiser to switch to Modula-2 as a teaching
language, the sooner the better, since Standard Pascal is rather crippled
by today's measures of Good programming languages. But I guess that was
not the question... :>

--lars