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From: schwartz@gondor.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms,comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Quoted string parameters in VAX Pascal?
Message-ID: <3513@psuvax1.psu.edu>
Date: 30 Apr 88 19:41:13 GMT
References: <Apr.29.15.09.31.1988.23840@elbereth.rutgers.edu> <2812@bsu-cs.UUCP>
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Reply-To: schwartz@gondor.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz)
Organization: Penn State University
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In article <2812@bsu-cs.UUCP> cfchiesa@bsu-cs.UUCP (Christopher Chiesa) writes:
>In article <Apr.29.15.09.31.1988.23840@elbereth.rutgers.edu>, elkins@elbereth.rutgers.edu (George Elkins) writes:
>> 
>> Is there a way in VAX Pascal to define a procedure that will take
>> a variable length quoted string as a parameter?

>Now, it just so happens that the folks at DEC anticipated this, and built in
>a datatype you may be aware of but haven't mentioned:
>
>       VARYING [...] OF char;
>
>This creates an "implicit record" type, containing the fields "body" and 
>"length" pretty much as I declared 'em above for (semi-) standard Pascal.


Interesting.  Did DEC happen to implement conformant arrays, as 
required by the ISO level 1 standard?  

(For those who don't know, conformant arrays are a mechanism to 
pass arbitrarily sized arrays to a procedure.  The declaration looks like:

procedure foo( bar: array[low..high: integer] of thingy );

Inside foo, the variables low and high give the bounds of the 
actual parameter passed to foo.)


-- Scott Schwartz     schwartz@gondor.cs.psu.edu    schwartz@psuvaxg.bitnet