Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!rutgers!uwvax!rang
From: rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Subject: Initialization in Pascal (was arrays)
Message-ID: <RANG.90Jan17221347@derby.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 18 Jan 90 04:13:47 GMT
References: <252@usblues.UUCP>
	<1990Jan16.173034.25686@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
	<4822@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <1990Jan17.044003.2039@world.std.com>
	<4832@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Sender: news@spool.cs.wisc.edu
Distribution: na
Organization: UW-Madison CS department
Lines: 21
In-reply-to: shane@underdog.crd.ge.com's message of 17 Jan 90 19:53:08 GMT

In article <4832@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> shane@underdog.crd.ge.com (Randall H. Shane) writes:
>In article <1990Jan17.044003.2039@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>] Everyone knows that Pascal has no initialization syntax.  [ ... ]
>
>The lack of a good initialization syntax is a severe disadvantage in Pascal,
>I agree.

  VMS Pascal uses a syntax which is basically a Pascal translation of
C's initialization: VAR <name> : <type> := <value> .  It translates
into either load-time or run-time initialization, just as C's does.
(Aggregate constants are also supported, so arrays and records may be
initialized this way as well.)

  It would be nice if this eventually makes it into one of the
standards....

		Anton
   
+---------------------------+------------------+-------------+
| Anton Rang (grad student) | rang@cs.wisc.edu | UW--Madison |
+---------------------------+------------------+-------------+