[comp.sys.apple] Kyan Pascal and Programming Toolkits

rre@ihlpg.ATT.COM (Roger Espinosa) (09/09/87)

Hi.

Yes, it's time for another question: Does anybody out there use the
Kyan Pascal software? I've seen evidence of people using Kix, which
Kyan also makes, so I'm curious.

Currently I'm using Apple UCSD Pascal, but am annoyed by the APDA
expansion products (Desktop Toolkit, namely), and the fact that Apple
seems to have dropped UCSD Pascal from its product list and support
(instead backing fully everything that's GS-specific).  Kyan seems 
to have some eye-catching products that SEEM TO BE tested and final
versions (no first draft deals).  And even Kyan Pascal with the Systems
Utilities Toolkit and the Advanced Graphics Toolkit (dhires) costs
$175 from Kyan itself, cheaper than UCSD did at the mailorder house.

I seem to recall an A+ review of Kyan Pascal that was, well, reaky, 
but that was way back in 1984 so I wonder if things have changed.

Eagerly awaiting...

Thanks,
Roger Espinosa
"Stack Overflow S#1 P#4 etc"

-- 
		Roger R. Espinosa
		Live from the Rabbit Ranch
		ihnp4!ihlpg!rre

JZEM@MARIST.BITNET ("William J. Joel") (09/10/87)

I planned to use Kyan Pascal recently for a simple CAI project, but
had to revert to Applesoft BASIC as Kyan Pascal showed a very interesting
bug ... in some cases variables that were declared could not be assigned
new values.  I did a software swap with the distributer but the second
copy had the same bug.  I guess it's still _reaky_.

mw22+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Michael Alan Wertheim) (09/11/87)

I use an old, old (pre-2.0) version of Kyan Pascal.  I haven't seen any of
the newer versions, so some of these bugs may have been fixed  (I would
hope).

1.)  The NEW procedure doesn't work.  No matter what kind of structure you
try to allocate memory for, it always gives you 400 bytes.  For example, the
following programs do exactly the same thing:


PROGRAM P1;

TYPE PTR:^NODE;
     NODE:RECORD
	    A:BOOLEAN
	  END;

VAR P:PTR;
    I:INTEGER;

BEGIN
    FOR I:= 1 TO 100 DO NEW (P)
END.



PROGRAM P2;

TYPE PTR:^NODE;
     NODE:RECORD
	    A:ARRAY [1..100] OF ARRAY [1..100] OF REAL
	  END;

VAR P:PTR;
    I:INTEGER;

BEGIN
    FOR I:= 1 TO 100 DO NEW (P)
END.


Both programs crash at I = 100 or so.  Even if a boolean value takes up a
whole word of memory, I should be up in the thousands before Program1
crashes.  A single node form Program2 is too big to fit into memory, but it
seems like you can create 100 of them before you run out of memory.

2.) Very long string literals (including comments) will crash the compiler.
i.e. you try to compile a program and the compiler crashes into the monitor.


As I said before, these bugs have probably been fixed.  No flames form
current Kyan Pascal users please.


Michael Wertheim
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA

Arpa: mw22@andrew.cmu.edu
Bitnet: mw22@cmuccvma
UUCP: ...!{seismo, ucbvax, harvard}!andrew.cmu.edu!mw22#