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The Pascal programming language was developed by Niklaus Wirth as a simple language to parse, as it only required a single token of look ahead, but which is an example of a language that supports structured programming. Wirth named the language in honor of Blaise Pascal. |
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The Pascal programming language was developed by Niklaus Wirth as a tool for structured programming which would at the same time be simple to process for a compiler. Wirth named the language in honor of Blaise Pascal. |
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Early approaches (most notably the UCSD system) translated Pascal code into a machine-independent P-code representation. This intermediate code was then interpreted by a program specific to each architecture. As a consequence, only the small interpreter part had to be ported over to many architectures. In the late 1980s the Pascal community concentrated mainly on the IBM PC platform, driven in large parts by the inexpensive Turbo Pascal compiler by Borland. Many PC hobbyists in search for a structured replacement for BASIC used this product. Turbo Pascal, being available only on one architecture, translated directly to Intel 8088 machine code, making it much faster than interpreted schemes. During the 1990s compilers that can be re-targeted to different hardware architectures became more prevalent. This allowed for Pascal translation to native machine code that is at the same time easily ported to new hardware. With Turbo Pacal version 5 Borland added Object Orientation to Pascal forming the Object Pascal dialect. Their main language from 1996 on, Delphi, is in turn based on this. Wirth also developed Modula-2?, a language similar to Pascal which also supports object oriented programming. |
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The Pascal dialect at UCSD began as a hybrid language, aimed at being machine independent by having a common syntax interpreted into machine-dependent pseudocode which could then be executed by the final machine. As hardware became standardized on the IBM-Intel designs, the necessity for machine independence became less prominent. Although there are still Pascal interpreters available, there are compilers as well for many machines. These compilers frequently use today's large memories to accomplish both the first and second stage of processing. |
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In the PC community, an early inexpensive Pascal compiler was distributed by the Borland software company. This earned Pascal many hobbyist users during the 1980's. |
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* [GNU Pascal Compiler] (GPC) is an additional front-end to the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), and is written in C. Distributed freely under the GPL. * [FreePascal] is written in Pascal (so that it compile itself), and is aimed at providing a convenient and powerful compiler, able both to compile legacy applications and to be the means of develop new ones. Also distributed freely under the GPL. |
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* [GNU Pascal Compiler] (GPC) is an additional front-end to the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), and is written in C. Distributed freely under the GNU General Public License. * [FreePascal] is written in Pascal (so that it compile itself), and is aimed at providing a convenient and powerful compiler, able both to compile legacy applications and to be the means of develop new ones. Also distributed freely under the GNU GPL. |
Early approaches (most notably the UCSD system) translated Pascal code into a machine-independent P-code representation. This intermediate code was then interpreted by a program specific to each architecture. As a consequence, only the small interpreter part had to be ported over to many architectures.
In the late 1980s the Pascal community concentrated mainly on the IBM PC platform, driven in large parts by the inexpensive Turbo Pascal compiler by Borland. Many PC hobbyists in search for a structured replacement for BASIC used this product. Turbo Pascal, being available only on one architecture, translated directly to Intel 8088 machine code, making it much faster than interpreted schemes.
During the 1990s compilers that can be re-targeted to different hardware architectures became more prevalent. This allowed for Pascal translation to native machine code that is at the same time easily ported to new hardware.
With Turbo Pacal version 5 Borland added Object Orientation to Pascal forming the Object Pascal dialect. Their main language from 1996 on, Delphi, is in turn based on this.
Wirth also developed Modula-2?, a language similar to Pascal which also supports object oriented programming.
Several Pascal compilers are available for the use of general public:
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