amlovell@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Anthony M Lovell) (03/31/89)
At work, we have a 37,000 line Turbo Pascal program that always needs debugging. We run MS-DOS and tend to edit it using Turbo Pascal's editor and IBM's Professional Editor II (yukko). Does anyone know of a commercially available tool to help us develop this code? Something that supports hyper-text like ability to zip to function and procedure declarations and so forth? You know what I mean - I've seen tools like this for C. Are we forever going to have to wonder which file get_status_info(blah, blah, blah) is in? Recommendations can be sent by email, thanks! -- amlovell@phoenix.princeton.edu ...since 1963.
davidr@hplsla.HP.COM (David M. Reed) (04/15/89)
I use Turbo Pascal extensively, such that I develop large programs comprised of many modules (or Units). It was always difficult to trace through a program, not knowing in which file a particular Procedure or Function was defined. Then one day it dawned on me, while perusing my MKS Toolkit manual, that they had a program, called ctags, that is used to create a "tags" file which contains all of the functions in your C programs, and which the editor vi can use to jump to the appropriate place in the proper file. So I ran it on a C program, determined what the "tags" file format was like, and then quickly created a ksh script to build a similar file of Pascal Procedure and Function references. Now, within vi, I simply place my cursor on the name of a Procedure/Function, press ^], and it immediately loads in the proper file and jumps to the location of the Procedure/Function. (And, with vi, it is easy to return to the file and location I was at previously by the :e# command.) Wow! This has really saved me a lot of time and trouble. (I am so VERY greatful, at times like this, for the great power in a lot of UN*X tools, and the wonderful implementation that MKS has done!)