Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-sdd!trwrc!agnew
From: agnew@trwrc.UUCP (Robert A. Agnew)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2
Subject: comp.lang.modula2
Keywords: Wirth New edition
Message-ID: <331@trwrc.UUCP>
Date: 8 Mar 89 21:41:47 GMT
Organization: TRW-MEAD, San Diego, Ca.
Lines: 18


    I can't believe it, he's (N. Wirth) released another edition (the 4th)
of the spec for Modula II.  I didn't think that he was still interested
after abondoning the language for Oberon, but I guess the royalities
are worth it. The major change was the same one that caused me so much
pain in porting the single pass NS32000 compiler; namely, CARDINAL is
now just a subrange [0..32767] of INTEGER! I can't believe it. Why 
throw away unsigned 16 bit arithmetic not to mention 32-bit unsigned 
arithmetic (LONGCARD). How will it be possible to port code from
16 bit machines (and there is a lot of it ) to machines using the 
4th Edition spec? I had to recast almost every assignment to the new
style of integer with CARDINAL( ) in order to get the compiler source to
compile on a 3rd edition compiler. This was about 1000 such occurances.

	I suggest that every MODULA II compiler writer out there totally
disregard the flagrant insanities in the 4th edition!

Bob Agnew -- My opinion and mine alone!