powell@decwrl.UUCP (11/13/83)
From: powell (Mike Powell) Does anyone have any opinions for what ought (or ought not) to be included in a standard set of library routines for Modula-2? The system distributed by Cambridge has a total of 80 definition files in its library. I don't know how many of these are for users and how many are just there to implement the rest of the runtime library. It seems there are (at least) two dangers in not having a consensus on what should be in the library. One is that programs will grow to depend on a large number of modules that are neither portable nor implemented be everyone (e.g., consider the experience of Lisp systems). Another is that programmers will not know which things are fair game to depend on, use, or modify, and which are not (e.g., consider the experience with Smalltalk). For starters, I claim the following should always exist: Module Functions storage allocate and deallocate io formatted read and write, unformatted read and write standard files for input and output math sin, cos, exp, sqrt string compare, assign, append for null-terminated strings parameters get number and values of program parameters Ignoring details for the moment, the questions are: Are there more things that should be added? Are any of the above inappropriate? By the way, is anyone else out there actually using Modula-2 for substantial (over 5000 lines) software development? I'd be interested in hearing about your experiences as well as what standard modules your system supports. Michael L. Powell Western Research Lab Digital Equipment Corporation Los Altos, California {ucbvax,decvax}!decwrl!powell