Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!gatech!rutgers!orstcs!nikola!richarr
From: richarr@nikola.cs.orst.edu (Robert Steven Richardson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Wanted:  Opinions on PASCAL and MOD-2 compilers
Message-ID: <9540@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU>
Date: 21 Mar 89 09:29:11 GMT
References: <1496@PSUECLB>
Sender: usenet@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU
Reply-To: richarr@nikola.UUCP (Robert Steven Richardson)
Organization: Oregon State Universtiy - CS - Corvallis, Oregon
Lines: 45

In article <1496@PSUECLB> peg@psueclb.BITNET writes:
>Has anyone seen Pecan Mod-2 ?  How does it compare to Benchmark, TDI,
>etc.?

>What about Pecan Pascal and the new MCC Pascal?  Are they reasonable in
>terms of compile times, exec. speed, environment, etc.?  Are they a
>decent substitute for Mod-2?

>peg@psuecl.bitnet     e-mail preferre

(mail server bounced back, so will post publicly.)

A friend and I made the mistake of purchasing Pecan Pascal.  It operates
under its own proprietary DOS, has little to no file compatibility with
AmigaDOS, is buggy, and won't multitask.  In defense of Pecan, I will
say that once you get a program written (in the bad editor), it will
run on any machine, MS-DOS up to UNIX under their system.  But on an
amiga, its really bad.  No graphics support even.

I have the old version of MCC Pascal.  It lacks serious string support
or access to libraries, but it works well and is reliable.  The new
version (which I have not seen), is supposed to fix this, but I have
not found an outlet in the states.

I have had some exp. with TDI and Benchmark, but not enough to make
a real evaluation.  I think Benchmark will probably give you faster
programming throughput from its integrated environment, though.  I
also received a nifty demo disk from a company called M2Sprint that
also looks impressive.

For a serious programming project, I would advise Modula-2 for
flexibility, and Pascal for a bit more simplicity.  Modula-2 is VERY
similar to Pascal, and isn't hard to pick up and master if you are
good at Pascal.

Good luck finding a compiler, and let me know what you think of the
new MCC Pascal if you see it.

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