lipman@decwrl.UUCP (02/13/84)
From: dosadi::binder (Wanted: A good five-cent nickel)
I have seen several queries re: Borland International's
TURBO Pascal, and thought I'd pass on what I know of it from
experience and hearsay.
1. TURBO Pascal is a full Jensen/Wirth Pascal except that it
does READ and WRITE rather than GET and PUT. It also does
BLOCK READ and BLOCK WRITE. It does NOT do sequential
access - it's all random access.
2. You can of course invoke procedures recursively. You
cannot pass a procedure or a function as a parameter to
another procedure.
3. The following extensions are supported:
a. BDOS/BIOS direct calls.
b. Inline code.
c. Include.
d. Absolute variable addressing.
e. Logical operators.
f. Program chaining (not overlays).
g. Structured constants.
h. Variant records.
i. ELSE condition on CASE statement.
4. String handling includes full dynamic strings, with the
following ops:
a. Concat.
b. Copy.
c. Position.
d. Length.
e. Value/String (for string/variable conversion).
f. Delete/Insert.
5. You can pass parameters on the calling command line, at
least with some systems. IBM does, Apple may.
6. You can create data structures larger than 64Kbytes,
although no single object may be larger than 64K:
Var I : array[32000] of integer; { Works }
Var I : array[64000] of integer; { Doesn't work }
7. TURBO is available for most CP/M, CCP/M, MS-DOS, and
similar systems. See below, about the guarantee.
TURBO compiles and links so fast partially because it has
a really snappy way of implicit linking in memory, thereby
avoiding much explicit linker activity. The fast compile/link
times might even include some disk activity, if you have a fast
disk. Track-to-track slows you down otherwise. There is a
definite difference between memory-only and disk compiles; you
use the memory-only version to test things and then you save
the final working version by doing a disk compile.
The editor is very much like WordStar, except that it does
just fine on the 40-column screen of my Apple. Turbo allows
installation of innumerable different terminals, more than 30
on the copy I bought, and they keep adding to it. It allows
redefinition of all the editor commands to make it look like
your favourite screenhacker.
There is a money-back guarantee if it simply won't work on
your system. But if Elmo Zwicky down the street turns up with
another vendor's product and you decide you like it better, no
thanks. Don't waste their time and your money. The reason for
the guarantee is that their master disk can produce over 30
system/format variations, and if you have some off-the-wall
system and think you might be able to read XYZ format and then
find you can't, they won't penalise you for that.
The disk is not copy-protected, and they include a
250-page manual ("READ IT!" was what the guy said) and they
also include, if you buy before the end of February, a small
spreadsheet called Microcalc, written in Turbo Pascal. The
source is included. There are a few bugs, all the more fun to
find and fix. This spreadsheet won't compile in the
memory-only mode on an Apple, but it does just fine when
compiled on disk.
For what my opinions are worth, BUY IT!!! It is far
better than any other Pascal I've dealt with.
- Dick Binder
decvax!decwrl!rhea!dosadi!binderphipps@fortune.UUCP (Clay Phipps) (02/28/84)
Some of the Borland [Borlund ?] International people gave a pitch
and demo at the January 24 meeting of the Graphics Special Interest Group
(SIG) of the Silicon Valley Computer Soc'y (SVCS).
To add to what Dick Binder has already written (in "net.micro"):
The lead man at Borlund, Philippe Kahn, was one of a handful of people
in Wirth's early [first ?] Pascal class at ETH/Zuerich
(for comparison, at the same time, the PL/I classes were jam-packed).
The Turbo development system (compler, editor, menu system, &c.)
occupies 33KB of memory (on an IBM PC).
Compilation rate is >= 2000 lines/minute (in-memory compiles, I assume).
The compiler is one pass, including the 8086 native code generator.
The system is written in 8086 assembler.
Source code limited to <= 64KB;
object code limited to <= 64KB.
Heap can be > 64KB.
The development environment is very similar to that provided
by UCSD Pascal, in that whenever the compiler detects an error,
it drops the user into the editor, with the cursor placed
on the offending source code line at the point of the error.
Run-time errors are handled similarly,
but the error can only be narrowed down to the offending statement.
System doesn't retain or can't locate variable values in memory
after a genuine crash, but those are rare [I think].
Type equivalence rules are "named equivalence",
which (if done properly) conforms to the new ANSI/IEEE/ISO Pascal Standards.
Many compilers (all those based on the P-code compilers ?)
use "structural equivalence". Jensen & Wirth is ambiguous on this issue.
There is little support [in my opinion] for separate compilation,
although it is allowed. Borlund emphasizes "includes and chaining"
[UCSD or Microsoft "units" would be much preferable].
The "include" feature is pretty vanilla [I can't find notes about it].
I believe [no notes] that the term "chaining" is used in the conventional way
to mean serial execution of programs, where the nth program explicitly
calls the (n+1)th program immediately before it (nth) terminates.
Communication between "chained" routines is done through external variables
in shared (= overlaid) memory; can also absolutely address variables.
Chained routines are grabbed from disk as needed.
Price is $49.95, including their thick typeset paperback manual.
The ~5x7 paperback is the basis of their "software protection scheme",
because it is a real pain to XER*X a thick "perfect bound" [publishing term
for the way the average phone book is bound] These are a pain to use
as manuals because they close all by themselves when set down on a desktop.
Those wishing to distribute object code produced by Turbo Pascal
are supposed to pay an additional one-time $100 license fee;
the fee covers an arbitrary number of programs.
A "Professional Turbo Pascal" is planned which supports overlays,
"real soon now".
See also recent reviews in *Interface Age* (by Alan Miller),
*MicroSystems*, and Jerry Pournelle's column in the February [March ?] Byte.
-- Clay Phipps
--
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