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From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: Shoulds arrays start at zero or one?
Message-ID: <1990Jan18.034728.8696@world.std.com>
Date: 18 Jan 90 03:47:28 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>
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Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die
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In-Reply-To: shane@underdog.crd.ge.com's message of 17 Jan 90 19:53:08 GMT


From: shane@underdog.crd.ge.com (Randall H. Shane)
>	At least one Pascal compiler I know of (UBC Pascal for the MTS
>operating system) had extensions to perform proper initialization, though
>I personally found the syntax EXTREMELY clumsy, and almost not worth it.
>The lack of a good initialization syntax is a severe disadvantage in Pascal,
>I agree.

(note: Randall's note is very well reasoned, we don't disagree, just
chit-chat.)

So is the fact that the *other* answer to every complaint is "there
exists a compiler with a magic extension to do that".

No wonder the language never caught on. I remember when we switched
from one 370 Pascal to another and no one's programs would recompile
without massive rework due to all the extensions people had relied on.

All Pascal compiler suffer from this because no one can use the
actual, standardized language.

At least C is standardized and it's very odd to get a program which
compiles syntactically under one not to compile under another
compiler.  And when you do one of them is almost always a rogue
compiler that should be shot (i.e. added gratuitous extensions that no
one needed other than some loser in marketing.)

>	Well, this is all from memory, since I no longer have access
>to a MTS machine, but I believe that it actually converted all
>parameters to reference parameters in the compiled code.  I can't
>produce the generated code to PROVE this, but if I have a chance in
>the next few weeks, I'll look up the UBC manual if I still have a copy
>and check this out.......

Hmm, if it really did that that would be a bug, no. It means that
things I *expected* to be copied (and, hence, unchanged by modifying
them in the called routine) might now be changed on return.

Ah, poor Blaise.
-- 
        -Barry Shein

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