[comp.sys.amiga] Wanted: Opinions on PASCAL and MOD-2 compilers

peg@psueclb.BITNET (03/21/89)

I am about to buy Benchmark Mod-2, but before I empty my wallet, can
someone answer this...

Has anyone seen Pecan Mod-2 ?  How does it compare to Benchmark, TDI,
etc.?

What about Pecan Pascal and the new MCC Pascal?  Are they reasonable in
terms of compile times, exec. speed, environment, etc.?  Are they a
decent substitute for Mod-2?

Any comments on these compilers would really be appreciated, especially
what you have used them for, how they compare to each other, etc.
Thanks in advance!!

peg@psuecl.bitnet     e-mail preferre

richarr@nikola.cs.orst.edu (Robert Steven Richardson) (03/21/89)

In article <1496@PSUECLB> peg@psueclb.BITNET writes:
>Has anyone seen Pecan Mod-2 ?  How does it compare to Benchmark, TDI,
>etc.?

>What about Pecan Pascal and the new MCC Pascal?  Are they reasonable in
>terms of compile times, exec. speed, environment, etc.?  Are they a
>decent substitute for Mod-2?

>peg@psuecl.bitnet     e-mail preferre

(mail server bounced back, so will post publicly.)

A friend and I made the mistake of purchasing Pecan Pascal.  It operates
under its own proprietary DOS, has little to no file compatibility with
AmigaDOS, is buggy, and won't multitask.  In defense of Pecan, I will
say that once you get a program written (in the bad editor), it will
run on any machine, MS-DOS up to UNIX under their system.  But on an
amiga, its really bad.  No graphics support even.

I have the old version of MCC Pascal.  It lacks serious string support
or access to libraries, but it works well and is reliable.  The new
version (which I have not seen), is supposed to fix this, but I have
not found an outlet in the states.

I have had some exp. with TDI and Benchmark, but not enough to make
a real evaluation.  I think Benchmark will probably give you faster
programming throughput from its integrated environment, though.  I
also received a nifty demo disk from a company called M2Sprint that
also looks impressive.

For a serious programming project, I would advise Modula-2 for
flexibility, and Pascal for a bit more simplicity.  Modula-2 is VERY
similar to Pascal, and isn't hard to pick up and master if you are
good at Pascal.

Good luck finding a compiler, and let me know what you think of the
new MCC Pascal if you see it.

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kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk) (03/22/89)

In article <9540@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> richarr@nikola.UUCP (Robert Steven Richardson) writes:
>In article <1496@PSUECLB> peg@psueclb.BITNET writes:
>>Has anyone seen Pecan Mod-2 ?  How does it compare to Benchmark, TDI,
>>etc.?
>
>I have the old version of MCC Pascal.  It lacks serious string support
>or access to libraries, but it works well and is reliable.  The new
>version (which I have not seen), is supposed to fix this, but I have
>not found an outlet in the states.
>

I have MCC Pascal V.1.25 also. I wouldn't quite say it is reliable though.
'With' miscalculates record field offsets, particularly when one is assigning
a function return value to a record field variable inside a 'with' block. In
general it has problems with any record structures that aren't very simple
(records of records, etc.). I have one program which, while attempting to
compile, crashes the machine so bad that Kickstart can't even reboot - I have
to turn the machine off. I also heard, but have not tested that it has
problems with 'real' calculations.

On the other hand, for simple Pascal programs, it is pretty nice & compiles
VERY quickly. I've been on the verge of upgrading to 2.0 for about 3 mos now,
but wish I could determine if the record structure handling has been fixed.
I'll probably go ahead & order it sometime this week. Maybe will report on
its status if there is any interest.

Also, I heard a rumor that it could make use of the 'C' include files for
Amiga-specific stuff - though I'm skeptical on this matter.

re serious string support:
  What happened to building your own string library 8^).

=======================================================
       Kent Polk - Southwest Research Institute
 {cs.utexas.edu, gatech!petro sun!texsun}!swrinde!kent
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