Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!RICHTER.MIT.EDU!krowitz
From: krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: Apollo Pascal
Message-ID: <8905130030.AA06952@richter.mit.edu>
Date: 13 May 89 00:30:55 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 27

Actually, I have found Apollo's compilers to be pretty good
in the compatibility area. The real problem is this:

Everyone I know defines "compatible" as "the way I do it".

Apollo's language manuals have all language extensions marked
in red type. DEC's Vax manuals (last time I looked at them)
had their non-standard language extensions marked in blue.
If you avoid those sections, your code will probably be ok ...
but there are an awful lot of sections which you would think
would be part of the language standard which aren't (would
you believe that the logical AND and OR functions aren't
part of the Fortran 77 standards? Ever compiler I've met
has the functions, but some have "a.and.b", some have "and(a,b)",
and some have "iand(a,b)"). Pascal is one of the worst 
languages in this sense. Much of the language's features
that are necessary for building useful programs were loosely
defined or not defined at all. 


 -- David Krowitz

krowitz@richter.mit.edu   (18.83.0.109)
krowitz%richter@eddie.mit.edu
krowitz%richter@athena.mit.edu
krowitz%richter.mit.edu@mitvma.bitnet
(in order of decreasing preference)