[1] : WordNet (r) 2.0

pascal
     n 1: a unit of pressure equal to one newton per square meter
          syn: pa
     2: french mathematician and philosopher and jansenist; invented
        an adding machine; contributed with fermat to the theory
        of probability 1623-1662 syn: blaise pascal
     3: a programing language designed to teach programming through
        a top-down modular approach
see also:
pa blaise pascal 

[2] : Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)

pascal n. an algol-descended language designed by niklaus wirth on the
   cdc 6600 around 1967-68 as an instructional tool for elementary
   programming. this language, designed primarily to keep students from
   shooting themselves in the foot and thus extremely restrictive from a
   general-purpose-programming point of view, was later promoted as a
   general-purpose tool and, in fact, became the ancestor of a large family
   of languages including modula-2 and ada see also
   bondage-and-discipline language. the hackish point of view on pascal
   was probably best summed up by a devastating and, in its deadpan way,
   screamingly funny 1981 paper by brian kernighan of kr fame
   entitled "why pascal is not my favorite programming language", which was
   turned down by the technical journals but circulated widely via
   photocopies. it was eventually published in "comparing and assessing
   programming languages", edited by alan feuer and narain gehani
   prentice-hall, 1984. part of his discussion is worth repeating here,
   because its criticisms are still apposite to pascal itself after many
   years of improvement and could also stand as an indictment of many other
   bondage-and-discipline languages. the entire essay is available at
   `http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html'. at the end of a
   summary of the case against pascal, kernighan wrote:

  9. there is no escape
  
  this last point is perhaps the most important.  the language is
  inadequate but circumscribed, because there is no way to escape its
  limitations.  there are no casts to disable the type-checking when
  necessary.  there is no way to replace the defective run-time
  environment with a sensible one, unless one controls the compiler
  that defines the "standard procedures".  the language is closed.
  
  people who use pascal for serious programming fall into a fatal
  trap.  because the language is impotent, it must be extended.  but
  each group extends pascal in its own direction, to make it look
  like whatever language they really want.  extensions for separate
  compilation, fortran-like common, string data types, internal
  static variables, initialization, octal numbers, bit operators,
  etc., all add to the utility of the language for one group but
  destroy its portability to others.
  
  i feel that it is a mistake to use pascal for anything much beyond
  its original target.  in its pure form, pascal is a toy language,
  suitable for teaching but not for real programming.
  
   pascal has since been entirely displaced mainly by c from the
   niches it had acquired in serious applications and systems programming,
   and from its role as a teaching language by java.


see also:
ada bondage-and-discipline language kr c 

[3] : The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)

pascal
     
         after the french mathematician blaise pascal
        1623-1662 a programming language designed by niklaus
        wirth around 1970.  pascal was designed for simplicity and
        for teaching programming, in reaction to the complexity of
        algol 68.  it emphasises structured programming
        constructs, data structures and strong typing. innovations
        included enumeration types, subranges, sets, variant
        records, and the case statement.  pascal has been extremely
        influential in programming language design and has a great
        number of variants and descendants.
     
        ansi/ieee770x3.97-1993 is very similar to iso pascal but
        does not include conformant arrays.
     
        iso 7185-1983e.  level 0 and level 1.  changes from jensen 
        wirth's pascal include name equivalence; names must be bound
        before they are used; loop index must be local to the
        procedure; formal procedure parameters must include their
        arguments; conformant array schemas.
     
        an algol-descended language designed by niklaus wirth on the
        cdc 6600 around 1967--68 as an instructional tool for
        elementary programming.  this language, designed primarily to
        keep students from shooting themselves in the foot and thus
        extremely restrictive from a general-purpose-programming point
        of view, was later promoted as a general-purpose tool and, in
        fact, became the ancestor of a large family of languages
        including modula-2 and ada see also bondage-and-discipline
        language.  the hackish point of view on pascal was probably
        best summed up by a devastating and, in its deadpan way,
        screamingly funny 1981 paper by brian kernighan of kr
        fame entitled "why pascal is not my favourite programming
        language", which was turned down by the technical journals but
        circulated widely via photocopies.  it was eventually
        published in "comparing and assessing programming languages",
        edited by alan feuer and narain gehani prentice-hall, 1984.
        part of his discussion is worth repeating here, because its
        criticisms are still apposite to pascal itself after ten years
        of improvement and could also stand as an indictment of many
        other bondage-and-discipline languages.  at the end of a
        summary of the case against pascal, kernighan wrote:
     
        9. there is no escape
     
        this last point is perhaps the most important.  the language
        is inadequate but circumscribed, because there is no way to
        escape its limitations.  there are no casts to disable the
        type-checking when necessary.  there is no way to replace the
        defective run-time environment with a sensible one, unless one
        controls the compiler that defines the "standard procedures".
        the language is closed.
     
        people who use pascal for serious programming fall into a
        fatal trap.  because the language is impotent, it must be
        extended.  but each group extends pascal in its own direction,
        to make it look like whatever language they really want.
        extensions for separate compilation, fortran-like common,
        string data types, internal static variables, initialisation,
        octal numbers, bit operators, etc., all add to the utility
        of the language for one group but destroy its portability to
        others.
     
        i feel that it is a mistake to use pascal for anything much
        beyond its original target.  in its pure form, pascal is a toy
        language, suitable for teaching but not for real programming.
     
        pascal has since been almost entirely displaced by c from
        the niches it had acquired in serious applications and systems
        programming, but retains some popularity as a hobbyist
        language in the ms-dos and macintosh worlds.
     
        see also kamin's interpreters, p2c.
     
        "the programming language pascal", n. wirth, acta informatica
        1:35-63, 1971.
     
        "pascal user manual and report", k. jensen  n. wirth,
        springer 1975 made significant revisions to the language.
     
        bs 6192, "specification for computer programming language
        pascal", british standards institute 1982.
     
        jargon file
     
        1996-06-12
     
     
see also:
blaise pascal niklaus wirth algol 68 structured programming strong typing enumeration types 
subranges variant records case statement iso pascal conformant arrays 
conformant array schema ada bondage-and-discipline language kr octal 
c ms-dos macintosh kamin's interpreters p2c 
british standards institute jargon file 

[4] : The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)

pascal-
     
        pascal subset used in brinch hansen on pascal compilers, p.
        brinch hansen, p-h 1985.
     
        jargon file
     
     
see also:
jargon file 

Pascal >> P Words
Pascal, definition of term: Pascal
pascal_pag1.html

Blaise Pascal >> B Words
Blaise Pascal, definition of term: Blaise Pascal
blaise+pascal_pag1.html

Pascal Central
...The Ultimate Pascal Programming Web Site..
http://www.pascal-central.com/, score=100, date indexed=October 5, 2005, 9:10 am

Pascal
...Although Pascal was not the first to study the Pascal triangle, his work on the topic in Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle.....Wren had been working on Pascal's challenge and he in turn challenged Pascal, Fermat and Roberval to find the arc length, the length of.....In 1632 the Pascal family, Étienne and his four children, left Clermont and settled in..
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Pascal.html, score=98, date indexed=May 15, 2005, 6:13 am

Université Blaise Pascal - Un capital de compétences
...Cette année encore, l université Blaise Pascal participe à la Fête de la science et vous.....L'Université Blaise Pascal- Clermont-Ferrand II Formations en sciences, technologie.....Pascal et du CNRS, a participé à une expérience unique visant à tester, en un mois..
http://www.univ-bpclermont.fr/, score=97, date indexed=October 5, 2005, 9:50 am

Virtual Pascal: News
...Virtual Pascal is a powerful 32-bit cross-platform development environment utilising the.....I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I am sad to report that Virtual Pascal has died a.....FreePascal and Delphi are both fine Pascal compilers that have moved well beyond where VP..
http://www.vpascal.com/, score=97, date indexed=October 5, 2005, 7:28 pm

E-Xoopsien
...7 de Pascal.Vous pourrez normalement faire la même chose avec les autres modules, par.....pascal..Parlez de nous.. Glossaire.. - C : Language de programmation universel, qui s'est.....Posté par pascal le 14/8/2003 11:53:12 (2109 lectures)  La suite... | 6 commentaires .. E..
http://www.perso-search.com/e-xoopsien/, score=97, date indexed=October 6, 2005, 2:15 am

GNU Pascal
...GNU Pascal.. Welcome to the WWW home site of GNU Pascal, the free 32/64-bit Pascal.....Your rights and responsibilities when using, distributing, and modifying GNU Pascal ..What.....RHIDE - Robert Höhne's integrated development environment for GNU Pascal running under DOS..
http://www.gnu-pascal.de/, score=96, date indexed=October 5, 2005, 2:24 pm

Free Pascal - Home Page
...Furthermore Free Pascal supports function overloading, operator overloading, global.....On other operating systems Free Pascal runs on any system that can run the operating.....The ARM port of Free Pascal can now be used to develop games for the Gameboy Advance. See..
http://www.freepascal.org/, score=96, date indexed=October 5, 2005, 9:22 am

Pascal's Wager
...But what is distinctive is Pascal's explicitly decision theoretic formulation of the.....Still, we will closely follow Pascal's text, supporting our reading of his arguments as.....Pascal maintains that we are incapable of knowing whether God exists or not, yet we must..
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/, score=95, date indexed=May 15, 2005, 8:11 am

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