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From: arnold@gatech.UUCP (Arnold Robbins)
Newsgroups: net.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Re: Language transitions
Message-ID: <12226@gatech.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 27-Feb-85 13:02:48 EST
Article-I.D.: gatech.12226
Posted: Wed Feb 27 13:02:48 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 27-Feb-85 22:28:22 EST
References: <685@topaz.ARPA> <975@reed.UUCP>
Organization: Firefighters Extraordinaire, Inc.
Lines: 32

> > Of course this is by no means the only problem with Pascal's I/O.  Other
> > major ones include:
> >   - no random access
> >   - no way to open a file with a specified name from with the program.
> > 	reset(input,'foo') is an extension. It is not in the standard.  
> >   - no I/O of enumerated types (nor input of Booleans)
> >   - the representation of files other than text is not defined.  This
> > 	means that you can't write records onto a tape and expect to
> > 	read the tape on a different system.
> > I have never seen a program that I needed to write that could be written
> > in standard Pascal.
> 
>   If there is a way in standard Pascal to APPEND to a file, (without
> copying out its contents, wiping out the file, and putting them back in
> before the appending), it must be a closely kept secret.
> 
> 				Alexis Dimitriadis
> 				alexis @ reed

One of the proposed extensions to Pascal described in the July 84 Sigplan
Notices is and extend(f) procedure, which positions to the end of 'f',
and leaves it open for writing.  Another extension is for random access
(seeking).  There is other work in progress to give Pascal some decent I/O.

If they keep it up, Pascal may yet end up a decent language.  Now if we just
had own variables and compile time initialization....
-- 
Arnold Robbins
CSNET:	arnold@gatech	ARPA:	arnold%gatech.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
UUCP:	{ akgua, allegra, hplabs, ihnp4, seismo, ut-sally }!gatech!arnold

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