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Questions tagged [pascal]

For questions regarding the use or installation of the Pascal language on retrocomputers.

23 votes
6 answers
4k 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 ...
typedeaf's user avatar
  • 333
14 votes
5 answers
2k views

Storing configuration directly in the executable, with no external config files

Back in the days when dinos talked fluently English, Arabic, Spanish and a bunch of other languages, when one could change tapes of a PDP-11 on the fly there was a programming language Turbo Pascal. I ...
HermDP's user avatar
  • 383
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 ...
Schezuk's user avatar
  • 3,754
-1 votes
2 answers
419 views

How can I embed C++ Builder 6 (32-bit) VCL into a Delphi 7 (32-bit) VCL application by using a .DLL? [closed]

Note to the reviewer: Please sorry for my English, I don't speak it well. But all Information's should be reproduced. If you have any questions, let me know it. Thanks, Jens Hello, This is more a ...
Jens's user avatar
  • 83
9 votes
2 answers
393 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 ...
Leo B.'s user avatar
  • 19.4k
6 votes
1 answer
544 views

How do I read a port value using Turbo Pascal inline code on CP/M?

After successfully using port[0] to read a port value in Turbo Pascal, I thought I'd try to understand how to do this using inline assembly/machine code. I'm able to write to the port (my OutPort ...
Nick Bolton's user avatar
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. ...
Leo B.'s user avatar
  • 19.4k
17 votes
4 answers
4k views

Why does Pascal have numeric labels?

Pascal was intended, in part, to be a simple language to implement. Some of the design decisions reflecting this are Declarations/definitions must be given in a strict order (labels, constants, types,...
texdr.aft's user avatar
  • 3,627
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 ...
Leo B.'s user avatar
  • 19.4k
6 votes
0 answers
221 views

Was there another dialect of Pascal with this range checking feature?

I've decompiled yet another Pascal compiler for the BESM-6. While it does not implement the full language (for example, packed records and arrays are not implemented, helper routines SEL and INS are ...
Leo B.'s user avatar
  • 19.4k
5 votes
1 answer
1k views

Looking for the source code of a sophisticated Pascal pretty-printing program

I'm trying to find a 70s or very early 80s source code of a Pascal pretty-printing program which is more advanced than the version mentioned on the Prettyprint wiki page which is undated and somewhat ...
Leo B.'s user avatar
  • 19.4k
9 votes
1 answer
2k views

Is this a bug or an allowed Pascal behavior?

Consider the following Pascal program: 1 1 PROGRAM MAIN(OUTPUT); VAR F:TEXT; I:INTEGER; 2 2 BEGIN 3 2 REWRITE(F); 4 3 FOR I := 10 TO 30 DO BEGIN 5 3 WRITELN( I, ’...
Leo B.'s user avatar
  • 19.4k
11 votes
1 answer
639 views

How much time and how many people were required to develop Delphi version 1?

I would guess the compiler was primarily a modification of Borland's Turbo Pascal, while the Integrated Development Environment and Visual Component Library required a lot more development from ...
joe's user avatar
  • 111
99 votes
1 answer
30k views

Why did MS-DOS applications built using Turbo Pascal fail to start with a division by zero error on faster systems?

On faster MS-DOS systems, it wasn't entirely uncommon for applications built using Borland's Turbo Pascal to fail to start, and (before exiting back to the command prompt) to report a division by zero ...
user's user avatar
  • 5,336
7 votes
1 answer
509 views

Was dynamic type check in Pascal commonplace?

The BESM-6 Pascal compiler I'm experimenting with has a notable difference from Standard Pascal: formal arguments of formal parameters-procedures or functions are not specified, but are checked at ...
Leo B.'s user avatar
  • 19.4k

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