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From: jlg@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Path Pascal Release 0.9
Message-ID: <21174@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 6-Feb-85 23:29:33 EST
Article-I.D.: lanl.21174
Posted: Wed Feb  6 23:29:33 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 9-Feb-85 07:39:20 EST
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Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 29

> > [...]  It
> > doesn't look compatible with either ISO pascal or ANSI pascal (unless the
> > phrase 'standard features' refers to one of these standards instead of J&W
> > - I doubt it, some of the 'extensions' appear to contradict features of the
> > two new standards).  I don't fault the people who wrote this new compiler.
> 
> Concurrent Pascal has been around for ages.  It has supported multitasking
> for ages.  It also was based on a different variation of Pascal, before ISO
> standardized it, and before J&W even published the second edition of their
> text.  So, who's ahead of the game?
> 

Yes I know about Concurrent Pascal - I read Brinch Hansen's book on the
language several years ago.  In fact, I'm surprised that ISO or ANSI didn't
adopt the features of Concurrent Pascal or at least introduce replacements
for them.  This is just more evidence that Pascal is very resistive to
standardization.  This even seems to be part of the reason: Pascal is
popular but incomplete.  Unforunately, the people who extend the language
or try to standardize it don't talk to each other.  I think this is also
why Wirth didn't extend the language himself - his extensions to Pascal
came out as a new language: Modula.  At least with Modula there was no
requirement to maintain backward compatibility.

Now, is Path Pascal upward compatible from Concurrent Pascal?  Is it
upward compatible from J&W (either edition)?  These are questions which
implementors seem not to ask themselves until after they release their
software (if then).

J. Giles