Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!maytag!watstat!dmurdoch
From: dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu (Duncan Murdoch)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Runtime dimensioning and Pascal
Message-ID: <809@maytag.waterloo.edu>
Date: 12 Nov 89 17:04:58 GMT
References: <6354@merlin.usc.edu> <9686@vax1.cc.lehigh.edu> <804@maytag.waterloo.edu> <6422@merlin.usc.edu> <1989Nov12.040036.10887@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu>
Sender: daemon@maytag.waterloo.edu
Reply-To: dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu (Duncan Murdoch)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
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In article <1989Nov12.040036.10887@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu> schwartz@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz) writes:
>The problem is that Borland, for no sensible reason, omitted lots of
>required functionality.  If you are so excited by features, then ask
>yourself why Borland omitted conformant arrays, procedure parameters,
>and the elegant i/o model that the standard requires.  

You're right about conformant arrays, but Borland has included procedure
parameters, and the elegance of standard Pascal I/O is debatable when you
hear about the compromises that have to be made to deal with interactive
I/O.

>In my humble
>opinion, the reason they left these things out is pretty clear to
>anyone who read the documentation that came with the early versions of
>the compiler: they wanted a quick and easy implementation for the CP/M
>systems that were popular at the time.  Anything the compiler writer
>didn't understand, didn't want to spend time on, or didn't feel like
>using simply got left out.

That's a reasonable explanation for the early releases, but TP is a mature
compiler now.  Borland has had lots of time to program conformant arrays
and Pascal style I/O, but has chosen not to.

Why don't we all agree that TP is not Pascal, and forget the standard?  
Let's change the name of this group to comp.lang.tp, and drop comp.lang.pascal,
because it deals with an old, irrelevant language (1/2 :-).

Duncan Murdoch