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From: dconway@hpldsla.sid.hp.com (Dan Conway)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Brief history of Turbo Pascal
Message-ID: <27710004@hpldsla.sid.hp.com>
Date: 22 Feb 91 23:27:25 GMT
References: <189@univaq.sublink.org>
Organization: HP Scientific Instruments Division - Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 43

/ hpldsla:comp.lang.pascal / lucrezi@univaq.sublink.org (Gino Lucrezi) /  4:29
am  Feb 13, 1991 / writes:

> Version 2 and 3 were released for CP/M, too.
> In the CP/M version, overlays were added in 3.0.
> In 3.0 they also added New and Dispose - it's not a joke!
> In 2.0 and earlier they just had the *$%#@! Mark and Release.

New was available along with mark and release in 1.0 for CP/M.
Dispose was added in 2.0 for CP/M; that was the main reason that I bought 2.0.

> 
> Notice that accordin to someone at Byte (I never could try out) early version
> of TP were quite slower than MS.
> But Borland kept making tests "with default options", which was hardly fair - MS
> by default did all possible checks, TP by default disabled ^C, range checking,
> recursion (YES!! you had to specify you wanted recursion!!!), and so on.
> BTW, I'm not sure that 1.0 and 2.0 allowed recursion anyway (I have read a 3.0
> manual, sometime, and I am sure it has the flag to enable it).
> 
> Well, I am really glad nowadays Turbo Pascal has almost no relation to those
> earlier releases....

The selection of default options by Borland could be annoying;  they were
optimizing for code size.  I had at least one recursive program that did very
strange things until I figured out what was wrong and set the compiler option
for recursion appropriately.  Recursion was available (by option) in both 1.0
and 2.0.

> -- 
> Gino Lucrezi @ Universita` "V. Rivera" - L'Aquila - Italy
> SUBLINK:  lucrezi@univaq.sublink.org
> FIDO:     2:335/408.1  2:335/307.4
> ----------
> 

As another poster pointed out, the entire compiler/editor environment was 27K
on CP/M (for version 1.0, increased to a bit over 30K for 2.0).  It was
also FAST.  I held on to my CP/M equipment for several years longer that I
might have otherwise, due mainly to this product.

Dan Conway
dconway@hp-sde.sde.hp.com