Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!iuvax!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!ags
From: ags@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Dave Seaman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Re^2: Standard Pascal
Message-ID: <3228@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 1 Jul 89 18:22:03 GMT
References: <8616@pyr.gatech.EDU> <18965@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Reply-To: ags@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Dave Seaman)
Organization: Purdue University
Lines: 25

In article <18965@paris.ics.uci.edu> milne@ics.uci.edu (Alastair Milne) writes:
>mlw@pyr.gatech.EDU (Michael Williams) writes:

  [ Re:  Borland leaving out PUT/GET ]

>   I don't know that GET and PUT are necessarily "better" than read or write,
>   but they are certainly more standard.  Using them, I can transport typed
>   file I/O among a number of Pascal dialects; Turbo is the only one I know of
>   that overloads READ and WRITE, so it's the only one where that will work.  

PUT/GET is neither more nor less standard than READ/WRITE.  The standard
specifies that READ(f,v) is exactly equivalent to "v := f^; get(f)", and that
WRITE(f,v) is exactly equivalent to "f^ := v; put(f)".  If a compiler does not
allow you to use both, then it isn't Pascal.

If a compiler does not allow you to pass procedures or functions as arguments
to other procedures or functions, then it isn't Pascal.

If a compiler limits the length of identifiers or does not consider all
characters in the identifier to be significant, then it isn't Pascal.

On the other hand, a compiler can allow all of the extensions that have been
discussed (such as variable-length strings), and still be standard Pascal.
Those who are claiming that Turbo is "better" than standard Pascal need to get
this straight.