justinb@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Justin Russell Bendich) (01/17/90)
Some reasons for preferring C to Pascal: 1) Berkeley Pascal does not provide an interface to kernel calls. This makes unix programming extremely difficult. 2) Pascal has piss-poor string handling capability. So does C (intrinsically), but the necessary routines are standard. 3) You can get away with everything in C. Some reasons for preferring Pascal to C: 1) It has set types. Yes, i know you CAN implement these in C, but you have to. Furthermore, they'll never come as naturally as in Pascal. 2) You'll never have a problem like a=1/*intptr opening up a comment. 3) You can get away with everything in C.
6600pete@hub.UUCP (Pete Gontier) (01/17/90)
From article <5395@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM>, by justinb@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Justin Russell Bendich): > 1) Berkeley Pascal does not provide an interface to kernel calls. This makes > unix programming extremely difficult. Ack! Who's using Berkeley Pascal? > 2) Pascal has piss-poor string handling capability. So does C (intrinsically), > but the necessary routines are standard. As are more of the necessary routines in Pascal. If you're going to talk about "standard," you may as well allow the usual "standard" Pascal string extensions. Turbo Pascal afficionados (myself not included) have been using Concat and Omit and friends for years now. (Note that I am not here talking about the ISO Standard Pascal; the word "standard" is being used here in another way.) > 3) You can get away with everything in C. Aaahhh. I think C. Pascal bites me every day when I try to make it speak C. > 1) [ Pascal ] has set types. Yes, i know you CAN implement these in C, but you have > to. Furthermore, they'll never come as naturally as in Pascal. Sure they will. ANSI C handles it quite nicely, and ANSI C is as "natural" as ISO Pascal. (There IS an "ANS Pascal," by the way, but I don't know what it looks like. Does it support strings yet? Whatever it is, it's behind Turbo. :-) ) > 2) You'll never have a problem like a=1/*intptr opening up a comment. But in C you'll have the problem with changing the scope of a statement (which becomes an error) when you start what you think to be a comment with {. Hmmm. > 3) You can get away with everything in C. Aaahhh. It's so nice to avoid crashing the Mac because Pascal won't let me where C would... :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pete Gontier | InterNet: 6600pete@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu, BitNet: 6600pete@ucsbuxa Editor, Macker | Online Macintosh Programming Journal; mail for subscription Hire this kid | Mac, DOS, C, Pascal, asm, excellent communication skills