Questions tagged [pascal]
For questions regarding the use or installation of the Pascal language on retrocomputers.
31 questions
21 votes
3 answers
4k views
What problems did Knuth have because TeX and WEB were Pascal instead of C?
In the paper Bibliography Prettyprinting and Syntax Checking, by Nelson H. F. Beebe, there is this rather interesting mention: C does not have Pascal’s problems with character strings and dynamic ...
- 479
13 votes
1 answer
3k views
Was there ever a C compiler written in Pascal?
When C was gaining popularity across various computer architectures and it was being ported to those architectures, was it always done via cross-compiling, or was there a known case of a C compiler ...
- 22.3k
3 votes
2 answers
697 views
How can I use GSX in Turbo Pascal for CP/M-80?
Several versions of CP/M Plus came with a device-independent graphics library called GSX. It would be fairly easy to call this from Turbo Pascal: the CP/M-80 version of TP3 includes a function Bdos. I ...
- 4,441
29 votes
8 answers
5k views
How can I reverse-engineer the game Wizardry (1981) for PC, based on UCSD Pascal?
I am looking at the files included with the 1981 game Wizardry. The particular version I have is from a 1998 re-release, but I do not know if the binary is still the original 1981 release. My ...
- 393
21 votes
8 answers
7k views
Did Pascal programmers really move on to Java in the 90s?
According to this video Pascal suffered great loss of percentage in the 90s. There is, contrary to the common belief that C prevailed over Pascal, a counterargument that Pascal programmers moved on to ...
- 3,834
9 votes
2 answers
491 views
How did UCSD Pascal exception mechanism work?
In the UCSD PASCAL II.0 Manual, there is a description (document page 140, PDF page 153) of a peculiar language feature: instead of non-local GOTO statements, as in the Wirth's Pascal, there is ...
- 22.3k
21 votes
2 answers
4k views
Who invented small string optimization?
In the source code of the 1972 Pascal compiler (a very large OCR-ed PDF), there are declarations of variables and record fields of type ALFA, which are "packed arrays" of 10 characters. ...
- 22.3k
7 votes
1 answer
2k views
Was there a bug in Wirth's original Pascal compiler?
It appears that both legacy Pascal compilers I have access to (for the BESM-6) contain a bug: they would happily produce code for program test(output);(* may have to omit (output) depending on the ...
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