Pascal (programming language): Difference between revisions

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===Early criticism===

Wirth's initial definition of the language was widely criticized. In particular, [[Nico Habermann]] commented in his "Critical Comments on the Programming Language Pascal" (1973) that many of its constructs were poorly defined, in particular for [[Data type|data types]], [[Range (computer programming)|ranges]], [[Record (computer science)|structures]], and [[goto]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Habermann |first=A. N. |date=1973 |title=Critical comments on the programming language Pascal |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf00288652 |journal=Acta Informatica |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=47–57 |doi=10.1007/bf00288652 |issn=0001-5903}} ([https://kilthub.cmu.edu/articles/Critical_comments_on_the_programming_language_PASCAL/6604568/files/12094973.pdf full text of technical report])</ref> Later, [[Brian Kernighan]], who popularized the [[C (programming language)|C language]], outlined his criticisms of Pascal in 1981 in his article "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language".<ref>Brian W. Kernighan (1981). [http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming Language"]. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090428163341/https://www.princeton.edu/~mike/unixhistory |date=2009-04-28}}</ref> The most serious problem Kernighan described was that array sizes and string lengths were part of the type, so it was not possible to write a function that would accept variable-length arrays or even strings as parameters. This made it unfeasible to write, for example, a sorting library. Kernighan also criticized the unpredictable order of evaluation of Boolean expressions, poor library support, and lack of [[static variable]]s, and raised a number of smaller issues. Also, he stated that the language did not provide any simple constructs to "escape" (knowingly and forcibly ignore) restrictions and limitations. More general complaints from other sources<ref name="Hoare.Sneeringer.Welsh.1977"/><ref>O.{{cite journal |last1=Lecarme, P|first1=O. |last2=Desjardins, "|first2=P. |title=More Commentscomments on the Programmingprogramming Languagelanguage Pascal", ''|journal=Acta Informatica |date=1975 |volume=4'', pp.|issue=3 |pages=231–243 (1975)|doi=10.1007/BF00288728}}</ref> noted that the scope of declarations was not clearly defined in the original language definition, which sometimes had serious consequences when using [[forward declaration]]s to define pointer types, or when record declarations led to [[Recursive data type|mutual recursion]], or when an identifier may or may not have been used in an enumeration list. Another difficulty was that, like [[ALGOL 60]], the language did not allow procedures or functions passed as parameters to predefine the expected type of their parameters.

===Rising popularity in the 1970s and 1980s===