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The purpose of GNU Pascal
by Peter Gerwinski 23 Jul '96

23 Jul '96

Hello folks, I think it's time to discuss about the purpose of GNU Pascal as stated by Juki (jtv) in GPC.GUIDE. More concrete: I disagree with some points and I would suggest to modify them. jtv> The purpose of the GNU Pascal project is to produce a jtv> Pascal compiler (called GNU Pascal or gpc) which jtv> - may be distributed under normal GNU license conditions jtv> - can genarate code and run on any computer for which the GNU C jtv> compiler can genarate code and run. Concerning the points above, I agree in complete. jtv> - supports both the Pascal standard and the Extended Pascal jtv> standard as defined by ISO and ANSI and IEEE. jtv> (ISO 7185:1990, ISO/IEC 10206:1991, ANSI/IEEE770X3.160-1989) It is okay and desireable to support these standards, but I wouldn't agree to obey the standards "come what may". As far as I would guess, 80% of all Pascal programmers are working with Borland Pascal or Delphi or a compatible system like Virtual Pascal, Speed Pascal, FPK Pascal, GNU Pascal or one of those ShareWare Pascal compilers written for the DOS platform. On the other side I know of only two Extended Pascal compilers: Prospero's Extended Pascal and GNU Pascal. So I call in question that Extended Pascal is more portable than Borland Pascal. Furthermore, I could not write my real-world programs just with Extended Pascal; I need, for example, bit shift operators, GetMem, FreeMem, and Objects. I think the way to go is to collect the good features of all the existing standards, ISO 7185, ISO 10206, Borland Pascal, Object Pascal, Pascal-SC, and integrate them in one powerful compiler which will set up the next standard. This is necessary, in my opinion, because *none* of the standards mentioned above is what I would call an "ideal" Pascal compiler by itself. I would be satisfied only with the *combination* of them. Apart from some bugs, the current version 1.1-2.6.3 of GNU Pascal is the best Pascal compiler I have ever seen, and we are not too far from making it even better. jtv> One reason for this is the desire to promote the use of Extended jtv> Pascal, which combines the clarity of Pascal with powerful jtv> tools (e.g. modules and string manipulation) suitable for real-life jtv> programming. Pascal was originally designed for teaching. jtv> Extended Pascal provides a smooth way to proceed to challenging jtv> programming tasks without learning a completely different language. The same holds for Borland Pascal. (In my opinion, the goals stated above are even better realized in Borland Pascal, but that's a matter of taste.) And there are other standards around, for example Pascal-SC (also named PXSC -- Pascal eXtensions for Scientific Calculations) with very useful features such as user-definable operators and procedure overloading. I would suggest to fix the goal of combining the clarity of Pascal with powerful real-life tools -- independently of a concrete standard. So my suggestion for the "Purpose" section of GPC.GUIDE would begin with: The purpose of the GNU Pascal project is to produce a Pascal compiler (called GNU Pascal or gpc) which - combines the clarity of Pascal with powerful tools suitable for real-life programming, - supports both the Pascal standard and the Extended Pascal standard as defined by ISO, ANSI and IEEE (ISO 7185:1990, ISO/IEC 10206:1991, ANSI/IEEE 770X3.160-1989), - supports other Pascal standards (UCSD Pascal, Borland Pascal, Pascal-SC) in so far as this serves the goal of clarity and usability, - may be distributed under normal GNU license conditions, - can generate code and run on any computer for which the GNU C compiler can generate code and run. Pascal was originally designed for teaching. GNU Pascal provides a smooth way to proceed to challenging programming tasks without learning a completely different language. jtv> GNU Pascal compiler is part of the GNU Compiler family jtv> combining a language independent part of the GNU Compiler with jtv> a Pascal specific front end. jtv> jtv> Other compilers of the family currently include compilers for jtv> the C, C++ and Objective C languages. Since this is true, we should compare the purpose of GNU Pascal with that of GNU C. In the section "Warning Options" of the GNU C info documentation (gcc), in the context of the "--pedantic" option which tells GCC to follow the ANSI standard as strictly as possible, we can find the following: gcc> A feature to report any failure to conform to ANSI C might be gcc> useful in some instances, but would require considerable gcc> additional work and would be quite different from `-pedantic'. We gcc> recommend, rather, that users take advantage of the extensions of gcc> GNU C and disregard the limitations of other compilers. Aside gcc> from certain supercomputers and obsolete small machines, there is gcc> less and less reason ever to use any other C compiler other than gcc> for bootstrapping GNU CC. In the same spirit I would suggest: Implement all reasonable extensions into GNU Pascal, encourage their use, and forget about the limitations of other compilers (such as UCSD or Borland Pascal) or standard definitions (such as Standard Pascal or Extended Pascal). jtv> ABOUT THE PASCAL AND EXTENDED PASCAL LANGUAGES jtv> ---------------------------------------------- jtv> jtv> [...] jtv> jtv> Extended Pascal is a standardized language which contains so jtv> significant extensions to Pascal that it is best regarded as jtv> a new language. It is currently not very well known, and computer jtv> vendors do not seem to be eager to provide compilers for it. jtv> Thus, there is social need for GNU Pascal supporting Extended jtv> Pascal. It is okay to support Extended Pascal (why not?), but in my opinion, Extended Pascal is not clear and powerful enough to serve as "the new Pascal standard", so programmers are not motivated to switch from Borland Pascal to Extended Pascal. I think, this is the reason why computer vendors do not provide Extended Pascal compilers. As far as I have understood, the committee which defined the standard knew Borland Pascal, so I simply cannot understand how they could define a standard which lacks some important features of existing compilers, for example the bit-shift operators or dynamical memory allocation with user-specified size (GetMem and FreeMem). There is social need for a *new* standard which integrates ISO 10206 Extended Pascal and other standards such as Borland Pascal and Pascal-SC. With GNU Pascal, we can *create* that new standard. For those who like standards: I suggest to implement compiler switches into GNU Pascal which force GPC to behave (inasmuch as possible) like a compiler of the specific standard, for example --standard-pascal for an ISO 7185 Standard Pascal compiler --extended-pascal for an ISO 10206 Extended Pascal compiler (which rejects Borland extensions) --borland-pascal for emulating the Borland Pascal compiler (which rejects Extended Pascal extensions) --pascal-sc for emulating a Pascal-SC compiler (not yet possible) but the default should be to accept *all* of the Pascal dialects and any combination of them, for example a Borland-style Unit which deals with Extended Pascal complex numbers and exports a Pascal-SC-style operator for matrix multiplication. (You actually can write such a thing with the current version of GNU Pascal!) jtv> Please refer to the document borland2ep.doc to find out more about jtv> the differences between Turbo Pascal and Extended Pascal. jtv> That document is written by Berend de Boer. I wrote another document about the same topic. It is somehow obsolete since GNU Pascal now understands most of the Borland Pascal language, but nevertheless you can find it at ftp://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/gpc-2.6.3/bp2ep.doc I am looking forward for reactions. Yours, Peter

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Re: Programmers wanted: CRT, Graph, etc. for GNU Pascal
by Berend de Boer 22 Jul '96

22 Jul '96

Hay guys, Seems part of my message was lost, here the remaing part: > The calls from System that are portable can for 90% be written in plain Extended > Pa The calls from System that are portable can for 90% be written in plain Extended Pascal. We should do better by following existing standards and provide EP interfaces for that. Groetjes, Berend. (-:

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Re: Programmers wanted: CRT, Graph, etc. for GNU Pascal
by Berend de Boer 20 Jul '96

20 Jul '96

First of all, does anyone know if there is a gpc archive? I went on holiday with my computer stuck and my compuserve mailbox overflooded (it seems to have a max of 100msgs). I miss about 1 week. > Florian has got free sources > for Borland compatible Units like SYSTEM, CRT, PRINTER, and GRAPH > for FPK Pascal which cry for being ported to GNU Pascal. > This should not be too difficult at least for the DOS platform because > FPK Pascal uses the same assembler syntax as GNU Pascal, and both > compilers can run with the GO32 DOS extender. The point of having an extended pascal compiler is being portable, at least that's the goal. Assembler and Dos are not the way to go. The point of having a System, Crt, Printer of Graph unit is entirely uninteresting if it is not portable except if you want to port Dos Borland Pascal programs to Extended Pascal. Why should anyone want to do this? I assume everyone is programming for Windows 95/Windows NT or Unix. Are programmers really running Dos today?? Quite a few calls in System or Crt do simply not apply in non-Dos environments. A portable Printer library?? The calls from System that are portable can for 90% be written in plain Extended Pa

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Programmers wanted: CRT, Graph, etc. for GNU Pascal
by Peter Gerwinski 07 Jul '96

07 Jul '96

Hello, everybody! I am in contact with Florian Klaempfl, the author of FPK Pascal, another free 32-bit Pascal compiler. Florian has got free sources for Borland compatible Units like SYSTEM, CRT, PRINTER, and GRAPH for FPK Pascal which cry for being ported to GNU Pascal. This should not be too difficult at least for the DOS platform because FPK Pascal uses the same assembler syntax as GNU Pascal, and both compilers can run with the GO32 DOS extender. (GNU Pascal for GO32 can be downloaded as ftp://kampi.hut.fi/jtv/incoming/turbo11b.zip - see the recent mail by Jan Jaap. :-) Anybody wants to do the job? Yours, Peter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dipl. Phys. Peter Gerwinski Fachbereich Physik Universitaet-GH Essen Phone: +49-201-183-2763 D-45117 Essen Fax: +49-201-183-2120 Germany e-mail: peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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NewsGroup announcement (from rs1)
by Peter Gerwinski 07 Jul '96

07 Jul '96

According to Peter Gerwinski: >From gpc-request(a)santra.hut.fi Sun Jul 7 02:54:19 1996 From: Peter Gerwinski <peter(a)agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de> Message-Id: <199607070038.CAA14344(a)agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de> Subject: NewsGroup announcement To: gpc(a)hut.fi Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 02:38:12 +0200 (MET DST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello, folks! Did somebody already announce GPC 2.6.3 with Borland extensions to the NewsGroups? If not, I am planning to crosspost the following to comp.lang.pascal.misc, comp.lang.pascal.borland, and comp.lang.pascal.iso-ansi: 8<------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NewsGroups: comp.lang.pascal.misc,comp.lang.pascal.borland,comp.lang.pascal.ansi-iso Followup-To: comp.lang.pascal.misc This is the announcement of version 1.1-2.6.3 of GNU Pascal (The announcement is somehow late since the actual release was on 19. December 1995. This won't happen again with the release of the next version.) -------- GNU Pascal is, as the name says, the Pascal compiler from the GNU family. This means: - 32 bit compiler, no limits, highly optimizing - runs on most operating systems (including DOS, OS/2, Linux, or any other UNIX) - FreeWare according to the GNU General Public License - compatible to other GNU tools such as GNU C and GNU debugger The compiler accepts the following language standards: - ISO 7185 Standard Pascal - ISO 10206 Extended Pascal (90%) - Borland Pascal (80%) Some highlights: - from Extended Pascal: complex numbers, initialized variables, structured function return values, modules - from Borland Pascal: inc, dec, shl, shr, absolute variables, units, objects - GNU extensions: min, max, (PXSC-style) user-definable operators -------- The source for the ISO compiler (and more information) is available from ftp://kampi.hut.fi/jtv/gnu-pascal Additional source for Borland Pascal compatible (and other) extensions is at ftp://kampi.hut.fi/jtv/gnu-pascal/turbo-alpha Binaries for DOS and OS/2 (with the EMX extender) and for Linux (a.out) are in ftp://kampi.hut.fi/jtv/gnu-pascal/binary Binaries for DOS (with the GO32 extender) and for Linux (elf) are in ftp://kampi.hut.fi/jtv/incoming ;-) If you want to join the gpc mailing list, write to gpc-request(a)hut.fi. The address of the list is gpc(a)hut.fi. -------- Peter Gerwinski <peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de> 8<------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Is this okay, or too long, or whatever? If you have any improvements, please let me know. Bug reports for my English are also most welcome. :-) Yours, Peter ******************* NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS! ******************* -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dipl. Phys. Peter Gerwinski Fachbereich Physik Universitaet-GH Essen Phone: +49-201-183-2763 D-45117 Essen Fax: +49-201-183-2120 Germany e-mail: peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ******************************** ACHTUNG: Neue e-mail-Adresse! Ab dem 22. Juni 1996 bitte an peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de schreiben. ******************************** ATTENTION: New e-mail address! >From 22. June 1996 on please write to peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de ******************************** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dipl. Phys. Peter Gerwinski Fachbereich Physik Universitaet-GH Essen Phone: +49-201-183-2763 D-45117 Essen Fax: +49-201-183-2120 Germany e-mail: peter.gerwinski(a)uni-essen.de --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Add me to the GPC list please
by Harry W. Reed 20 Jun '96

20 Jun '96

Hi, Please add me to the GPC mailing list. Thanks, Harry Reed doon(a)hec.nevada.edu This Message Was Sent With An UNREGISTERED Version Of PMMail. Please Encourage Its Author To Register Their Copy Of PMMail. For More Information About PMMail And SouthSide Software's Other Products, Contact http://www.southsoft.com.

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Re: GNU pascal compiler uploaded
by JanJaap van der Heijden 13 Jun '96

13 Jun '96

Look what I found in the mail this morning: >Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 22:25:39 -0400 >From: dj(a)delorie.com (DJ Delorie) >To: j.j.vanderheijden(a)student.utwente.nl >Subject: Re: GNU pascal compiler uploaded > > >I finally got around to moving the GPC files to the outgoing simtelnet >directory. They'll be in the v2gnu directory. > >-rw-r--r-- 1 dj user 291 Apr 26 08:03 gpc112b.txt >-rw-r--r-- 1 dj user 685430 May 6 07:10 gpc112b.zip >-rw-r--r-- 1 dj user 8621302 May 6 07:39 gpc112s.zip >-rw-r--r-- 1 dj user 372 Apr 26 08:06 gpt112b.txt >-rw-r--r-- 1 dj user 698287 May 6 07:41 gpt112b.zip > For those of you who don't know: this is about the DOS (djgpp) GPC. djgpp is very very popular, and Simtel must be mirrored in just about every country in the world. This must generate some interest for GPC... /janjaap -- Science is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing Werner von Braun

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Units
by None 04 Jun '96

04 Jun '96

Hello, everybody! A known bug in GPC is that it does not automatically read Unit (or Module) interfaces when a Unit is used (or a Module is imported). For that reason, something like gpc -c myunit.pas gpc myprog.pas myunit.o -o myprog does only work when the main program (myprog.pas) (*$includes *) or #includes the Module interface. This is bearable with Extended Pascal where you can have the interface in a separate file; with Borland style Units you include the whole Unit, so it is recompiled each time. However, there is a workaround which is just another bug in GPC:-) A Borland style Unit with an empty implementation part but declaring some procedures in the interface part is not rejected by the compiler, only by the linker. Therefore, we can use the following trick: ---- file: myprog.pas ---- (*$I MyUnit *) (* Include the *whole* file MyUnit.pas *) Program MyProg; uses MyUnit; begin Hello; end. ---- file: myunit.pas ---- Unit MyUnit; Interface Procedure Hello; Implementation (*$ifdef IMPLEMENTATION *) (* suppress re-compilation of implementation part *) Procedure Hello; begin (* Hello *) writeln ( 'Hello!' ); end (* Hello *); (*$endif *) end. Now you can compile the Unit separately with gpc -D IMPLEMENTATION -c myunit.pas and then link it when compiling the main program via gpc myprog.pas myunit.o -o myprog Okay? Try it. Good luck! Peter

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new binaries uploaded
by J.J. van der Heijden 20 May '96

20 May '96

Hello all, Today I uploaded a couple of new gpc-binaries to ftp://kampi.hut.fi/jtv/incoming. Hopefully, Juki will soon move them to an appropriate location. All of these are based on the public (2.6.3) snapshot of gpc. "turbo" flavours are based on Peter Gerwinski's "turbo-alpha" sources. The files are: gpc-1.1p2.linux.tar.gz turbo-1.1.linux.tar.gz Linux (ELF) gpc binary. I had to do some patching to gcc because gcc-2.6.3 ELF support was experimental and incompatible with the current (stable) state of ELF. Creates ELF executables. I think I uploaded these to sunsite.unc.edu (/pub/Linux/devel/lang/pascal) some time ago, although the "turbo" may have been version 1.0 Binaries were built on a late 1.3.x kernel and require libc-5.2.18 gpc112b.zip turbo11b.zip GPC binaries that fit into a djgpp (V2) distribution. djgpp is the "official" GCC release for MS-DOS, it should not be confused with Peter's EMX binaries, although they do roughly the same thing. Again, some patching to gcc because djgpp was v1.12 for gcc-2.6.3 and v2 for 2.7.2. gpc-1.1p2.cygwin32-beta14.zip turbo-1.1.cygwin32-beta14.zip GPC binaries that work ONLY with the current (beta14) release of the cygwin32 project. (Every new release seems to break compatibility with the previous one). The cygwin32 project is porting GNU software to Windows95 and NT (ix86 & ppc). This gpc creates PE/i386 executables. This is a work in progress: the compiler is restricted to console applications because it cannot access the Win32 API. The Win32 API requires a different way of stack management from the compiler (subroutine cleans stack), the rest of the world, including gpc, uses the C-style method (caller cleans stack). Hopefully, I can deal with this problem before gpc-1.2 is released, but I'm still interested in your experiences with this baby. More info on cygwin32 is available at: ftp://ftp.cygnus.com/pub/gnu-win32 I also have beta12 and beta13 win32 binaries around, but I don't think anybody is using b12 or 13 anymore so I didn't upload them. Last (but not least?), I have some Linux/ELF based gpc-crosscompilers They can be usefull if you want to develop from a single source tree, but support multiple target platforms. If anybody is interested in this stuff, he/she should contact me. You also need extra cross-binutils to make this work. I have linux->linuxaout, linux->djgpp & linux->win32 available. Happy hacking, J.J. van der Heijden

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BO5 for Linux: bug report and workaround
by Peter Gerwinski 04 May '96

04 May '96

Hello, everybody! I was reported a bug in the BO5 screen drivers for Linux console (something like a CRT for GPC): on some machines the program stops with a runtime error "cannot access video memory", even if compiling and executing as root. To work around, use the TERMCAP version instead; the only visible differences are that you (1) have to specify the termcap library when compiling: gpc -I /usr/src/bo5 -D TERMCAP hallo.pas -ltermcap -o hallo and that (2) you have to set the CL_COLOR environment variable in order to get colors: export CL_COLOR=YES The next version will fix this bug (I will probably rewrite the Linux drivers in complete). Yours, Peter

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