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From: darryl@ism780c.UUCP (Darryl Richman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2
Subject: Tyro questions
Message-ID: <4740@ism780c.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 1-Dec-86 16:06:45 EST
Article-I.D.: ism780c.4740
Posted: Mon Dec  1 16:06:45 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Dec-86 22:01:59 EST
Reply-To: darryl@ism780c.UUCP (Darryl Richman)
Distribution: net
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica, CA
Lines: 27


I am a neophyte in Modula 2 land, so if these questions are simpleminded,
please be patient with me.  I have Wirt's PIM2, edition 2 (I can't locate a
copy of edition 3).

1)  If I build an application with multiple modules, what, if anything, am
I guaranteed about each module's initialization code?  (I've looked at
several books and they either ignore the issue or say contradictory things).
In particular, am I guaranteed any particular order of execution?  What
happens if one module's initialization code bootstraps the application, but
other modules haven't had a chance to execute yet?

2)  What did Wirt change from edition 2 to 3?  In particular, what does he
say about NEWPROCESS, TRANSFER, and IOTRANSFER?  (My compiler, which is from
ETH, does not supply these procedures and implies that they are not
required.  Instead they have a process stacking paradigm that's not as
powerful.)

3)  Is it really considered a feature of the language that, given frp is a
function returning a pointer, the expression "frp()^.xyz" is not allowed and
must be coded as "tempP := frp(); tempP^.xyz"?

Thanks very much for any light you can shed!

	    --Darryl Richman, INTERACTIVE Systems Corp.
	    ...!cca!ima!ism780!darryl
	    The views expressed above are my opinions only.