[comp.lang.pascal] Two subj- TP4 books, and the missing Execute procedure

NCLARKE%DREW.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (02/21/88)

This message is of different parts, one technical, and the other practical...

First the practical one.  It appears that I will be teaching Pascal over the
summer, and I'll be needing a book.  I'll be using Turbo Pascal 4.0 and so
far as I know there are not any books that use it to the level of detail I
need.  The course will be for those who already have some background in
pascal, but don't understand how to apply it to application programs.  So,
you see, this book should have a sufficient level of detail beyond the "this
is pascal mentality" of many authors.  If anyone knows of any good books on
Turbo 4 please let me know at the address attached to this message.

Now for the fun stuff.

I am converting a somewhat large tp3 program to tp4.  The people at Borland
apparently didn't realize how useful the EXECUTE procedure was.  I need to be
able to pass total control to another program, NOT a subprogram (that should
silence the masses from yelling "use EXEC!")  I've search high and low and
found nothing.  Has anyone else run into this problem, and is there a solution
that allows me to simulate this important missing feature?

     -Neil

-------------------------------------------------
Neil Clarke                  NCLARKE@DREW.BITNET
Box 313
Drew University
Madison, NJ  07040
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jc58+@andrew.cmu.EDU (Johnny J. Chin) (02/23/88)

Turbo Pascal v4.0 has an Exec Procedure which allows you to do this with no
problems at all.  You should be able to execute any DOS command-line command or
program with this procedure.  I have used this procedure to run CHKDSK on my
disks and it works fine.

Its documented in then manual.  Unfortunately, I don't have it here at this
moment to tell you which pages but I think you could find, it.

By the way, it takes two paramters, one is the path and command to execute,
the other is the parameter to be passed.

I hope this helps.

                                       -- Johnny
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| Johnny J. Chin                               Carnegie Mellon University |
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