In message 19990512012516.B1546@esmeralda.gerwinski.de Peter Gerwinski writes:

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The problem is at compile-time, attached is a small module which exhibits this behaviour. My system is Red Hat Linux release 5.2 (Apollo) running kernel 2.0.36 on an i586. I've built gcc-2.8.1 and gpc 19990118.

gpc -v gives the following output

Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i586-pc-linux-gnu/2.8.1/specs gpc version 19990118, based on gcc-2.8.1

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Thanks for the detailed information. :-)

Below is a version of your test program that is ready for our test suite.

To work around the bug, you can drop the first `protected'.

I now have a significantly bigger module (which also imports from several other modules) which is exhibiting the same behaviour "prior parameter's size depends on `foo'" where `foo' is a protected string parameter in the function/procedure declaration.

In this case if I drop all the `protected' in the procedure/function declarations in the interface, I get "gpc: Internal compiler error: program gpc1 got fatal signal 6".

Any suggestions about more general work-arounds for this problem with string parameters in extended Pascal modules?

Converting the extended Pascal module to a unit seems to be a work-around, but having to do that is going to make this migration much more difficult than staying with the extended Pascal modules that the system currently uses.