Pascal (programming language): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:03, 11 February 2025

Revision as of 17:51, 19 February 2025

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===Pascal===

Pascal was influenced by the ALGOL W efforts, with the explicit goals of teaching programming in a [[structured programming|structured fashion]] and for the development of system software.<ref>{{Cite book|chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/10722581_1|doi = 10.1007/10722581_1|chapter = The Development of Procedural Programming Languages Personal Contributions and Perspectives|title = Modular Programming Languages|series = Lecture Notes in Computer Science|year = 2000|last1 = Wirth|first1 = Niklaus|volume = 1897|pages = 1–10|isbn = 978-3-540-67958-5}}</ref> A generation of students used Pascal as an introductory language in undergraduate courses. Other goals included providing a reliable and efficient tool for writing large programs,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wirth |first1=N. |title=The Programming Language Pascal |journal=Acta Informatica |date=1971 |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=35–63 |doi=10.1007/BF00264291|hdl=20.500.11850/68712 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>, and bridging the canyon between scientific and commercial programming, as represented by the then-widespread languages Fortran and COBOL, with a general-purpose language.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wirth |first1=N. |title=Recollections about the development of Pascal |journal=History of programming languages---II |date=January 1996 |pages=97–120 |doi=10.1145/234286.1057812}}</ref>.

One of the early successes for the language was the introduction of [[UCSD Pascal]], a version that ran on a custom [[operating system]] that could be ported to different platforms. A key platform was the [[Apple II]], where it saw widespread use as [[Apple Pascal]]. This led to Pascal becoming the primary [[high-level language]] used for development in the [[Apple Lisa]], and later, the [[Mac (computer)|Macintosh]]. Parts of the original [[Classic Mac OS|Macintosh operating system]] were hand-translated into [[Motorola 68000]] [[assembly language]] from the Pascal [[source code]].<ref>Hertzfeld, Andy. "[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Hungarian.txt&topic=Software%20Design&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium Hungarian folklore.org] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151118082558/http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Hungarian.txt&topic=Software%20Design&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium |date=2015-11-18}}: Macintosh Stories. Retrieved 2012-03-06.</ref>

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

In the two decades after 1975, Pascal gained increasing attention and became a major programming language for important platforms (including Apple II, Apple III, Apple Lisa, Commodore systems, Z-80-based machines and IBM PC) due to the availability of UCSD Pascal and Turbo Pascal.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Crespo |first1=Diego |title=Pascal: The language that almost took over the world part 1 |url=https://www.deusinmachina.net/p/pascal-the-language-that-almost-took?utm_source=publication-search |website=www.deusinmachina.net |access-date=4 January 2025 |language=en}}</ref>.

Despite initial criticisms, Pascal continued to evolve, and most of Kernighan's points do not apply to versions of the language which were enhanced to be suitable for commercial product development, such as Borland's [[Turbo Pascal]]. As Kernighan predicted in his article, most of the extensions to fix these issues were incompatible from compiler to compiler. Since the early 1990s, however, most of the varieties seem condensed into two categories: ISO and Borland-like. Extended Pascal addresses many of these early criticisms. It supports variable-length strings, variable initialization, separate compilation, short-circuit Boolean operators, and default (<code>otherwise</code>) clauses for case statements.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://pascal-central.com/ppl/chapter3.html#Extended |title=Extended Pascal |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151018023934/http://www.pascal-central.com/ppl/chapter3.html |archive-date=2015-10-18 |access-date=2015-10-17 }}</ref>

Some of the problems arising from the differences in the implementations of Pascal were later partly solved by the advent of Free Pascal, which supports several dialects with mode directives.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Crespo |first1=Diego |title=Pascal: The language that almost took over the world part 2 |url=https://www.deusinmachina.net/p/pascal-the-language-that-almost-took-56a?utm_source=publication-search |website=www.deusinmachina.net |access-date=4 January 2025 |language=en}}</ref>.

==Notes==