CBFalconer wrote:
Rick Engebretson wrote:
I have an old book;
"The PASCAL Handbook" by Jacques Tiberghien, Sybex, 1981. It covers the pascal language on DEC, CDC, Apple, HP, and USCD platforms.
It is remarkable how little the base language has changed.
Not at all. This is the power of standards. Similarly, C is virtually unchanged since about 1989, when the ANSI standard was issued. The firms and groups named above were aware of and largely observed the draft standards or their predecessor, Jensen & Wirths "Pascal User Manual and Report". Some of the original people still monitor comp.lang.pascal.ansi-iso, especially including John Reagan of DEC.
Unfortunately Borland thumbed its nose at the standard and was a large enough ox in the Pascal world to get away with it. This is, IMO, at the root of the non-popularity of Pascal today, and incidentally the reduction of Borland from a major software power to a minor player.
The following is from ISO10206, the Extended Pascal Standard, which is compatible with ISO7185 covering standard Pascal
"The resolution to form JPC clarified the dual function of the single joint committee to produce a dpANS and a proposed IEEE Pascal standard, identical in content. ANSI/IEEE770X3.97-1983, American National Standard Pascal Computer Programming Language, was approved by the IEEE Standards Board on September 17, 1981, and by the American National Standards Institute on December 16, 1982. British Standard BS6192, Specification for Computer programming language Pascal, was published in 1982, and International Standard 7185 (incorporating BS6192 by reference) was approved by ISO on December 1, 1983. Differences between the ANSI and ISO standards are detailed in the Foreword of ANSI/IEEE770X3.97-1983. (BS6192/ISO7185 was revised and corrected during 1988/89; it is expected that ANSI/IEEE770X3.97-1983 will be replaced by the revised ISO 7185.)"
Thanks for the friendly response.
Yes, Units, Pointers, the New procedure are all there in 1981.