peter (02/13/83)
The reason the Berkeley Pascal compiler and interpreter don't handle
if <condition> then else <statement>
correctly is because the parser generator we were using had a bug in it
having to do with look ahead sets across non-terminals that could derive
the empty string (one of which is <statement>). We've fixed the parser
generator and now we don't have this problem.
The funny part is that in the 6+ years this parser generator has been
broken the null-then-clause is the only example of it that anyone ever
complained about, though after we found the bug, we discovered there
were maybe 7 or 8 other places where this caused problems (details left
to the reader).
You should all hurry up and order your 4.1c bsd tapes which have the
latest Pascal system on it. In the meantime, inserting ``begin end''
will get around the problem.
... peter b. kessler