Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c:12176 comp.arch:6187
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!alberta!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!cornell!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!psuvax1!gondor.cs.psu.edu!schwartz
From: schwartz@gondor.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.arch
Subject: Re: one large array in Pascal
Message-ID: <3868@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu>
Date: 28 Aug 88 18:20:25 GMT
References: <5262@june.cs.washington.edu> <260@thor.wright.EDU> <479@m3.mfci.UUCP> <36174@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <1268@mcgill-vision.UUCP>
Sender: news@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu
Reply-To: schwartz@gondor.cs.psu.edu (Scott Schwartz)
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 22

In article <1268@mcgill-vision.UUCP> der Mouse writes:
>In article <36174@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> Bjorn Lisper writes:
>> Are "those
>> Pascal programs" maybe translated Fortran programs?
>
>I know of at least one which isn't: TeX.
>
>Why did Knuth do it this way?  I can only guess; I would guess that
>it's for some portability reason I am not aware of.

From tex.web:

  @* \[4] String handling.
  Control sequence names and diagnostic messages are variable-length strings
  of seven-bit characters. Since \PASCAL\ does not have a well-developed string
  mechanism, \TeX\ does all of its string processing by homegrown methods.

  Elaborate facilities for dynamic strings are not needed, so all of the
  necessary operations can be handled with a simple data structure.


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