tower@inmet.UUCP (07/27/84)
#N:inmet:16700001:000:877 inmet!tower Jul 25 16:45:00 1984 I am doing a study comparing Pascal and Modula-2. The following would be helpful: - Comments and experiences on Pascal and Modula-2. Particularly dis-advantages and advantages of each, and any comparsions between the two languages - Information on available implementations of Modula-2 on micro's and mini's. Supplier's name, addresses, phone numbers. Comments on an implementation, including ease of use, speed, quality of code, bugs, et. al. - Information on available conversion tools from Pascal to Modula-2. - Bibliographies on Pascal and /or Modula-2. Particularly those in the format needed by the Unix "refer" nroff pre-processor. People wishing a summary should send me mail. If there is sufficent interest, I will post it. Thanx! -len tower UUCP: {ihnp4,harpo}!inmet!tower Intermetrics, Inc. INTERNET: ima!inmet!tower@CCA-UNIX.ARPA Cambridge, MA
patcl@tekecs.UUCP (Pat Clancy) (08/11/84)
>> This makes it sound as if Modula-2 has made no progress over Pascal in >> string manipulation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, a lot of things could be further. "Open" arrays (eg.: of CHAR) are only allowed as formal parameters -- for a given string to really change size dynamically, one must either declare a string type which is large enough to hold any expected string value, or one must copy the string into a new area each time it changes. This is not much better than Pascal. Think about implementing a "concatenate" operation, for example; the only way to get around using a fixed maximum-size string type is to use NEW/ALLOCATE and pointers, in which case these "dynamic" strings will be incompatible with literal strings (which are ARRAY OF CHAR), so the whole thing is very ugly. True dynamic array types would be one solution. As for standard procedures: the actual language report (second part of the book) does not define any standard procedures on strings. Pat Clancy Tektronix {ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4,allegra,uw-beaver,hplabs}!tektronix!tekecs!patcl