This page contains various information about the standard versions of Pascal as stated by the ISO 7185, the original Pascal language designed by Niklaus Wirth.
The ISO 7185 Pascal standards is unique in that they did not seek to remake the existing Pascal language as defined by Niklaus Wirth. Instead, they simply defined Wirth's Pascal in a more formal form, and eliminated the ambiguities of the original language.
The first ISO standard essentially is the original language. Pascal has been subsetted, modified and worse. But in it's original form, Pascal may be the most carefully constructed, documented and standardized language in existence.
Pascal is, unfortunately, very much a "great improvement on it's successors", and continues to be useful for all programming work.
In the year 1968, Niklaus Wirth began work on the language Pascal. In 1969, the first compiler for the language, written in Fortran, appeared. In 1970, the first report on the language appeared by Niklaus Wirth.
In conjunction with the 40th anniversary of Pascal, there have been several new developments on this website. The original CDC compilers have been made available. The P4 compiler, used as the basis for so many Pascal implementations, including UCSD, has been updated, by me, to accept the full Pascal language, not just a subset, and the full source has been made available here under the name P5. This is the first update to the compiler since the 1970's.
I have also made countless improvements to the material on this web site, including fully cross referenced versions of the standard in many formats.
It is also the 10th anniversary of this web site, which appeared in about 1997.
While celebrating the 40th year of Pascal, we should also think hard about the state of programming today. 30 years ago Pascal reached its peak popularity. For a time, then, it appeared that the Algol idea of clear and readable programming was finally taking over from the age of Fortran. What happened instead was a mass movement back towards arcane languages and a complete abandonment of type safety. The result is today programs (and computers thereby) are considered fragile and bugridden by a public that used to consider computers as infallible. Programs are now designed for a 5 year lifetime, based on the idea that any program designed today will be obsolete in 5 years. As computers continue to get faster year after year, programs get slower year by year, in some cases evaporating the gains in computer speed.
Today Pascal is being reinvented. Java reinvented type safety. C# and .net reinvented "managed pointers". I'm sure more principles will be taken from Pascal and its successors and called a "new invention", that's the way the world works, and has always worked.
But just as the entire world does not eat at McDonalds, I can eat steak. The entire world does not have to march in the same direction, the same tune. Perhaps the idea that everyone would appreciate the advantages of Pascal was always an unobtainable dream. Pascal didn't replace Fortran, C did. And C may indeed have a lot more in common with Fortran than Pascal ever could or should.
So on the 40th, I raise my glass to Pascal, and to the retired professor who created it. Those of you who understand are welcome to join me.
Scott A. Moore
San Jose, California (aka "silicon valley")
CDC 6600 computer
Photo use courtesy of The Computer History Museum http://www.computerhistory.org
Available compilers: Here is your guide to full ISO/ANSI compilers that are current and SUPPORTED.
The ISO 7185 official newsgroup, COMP.LANG.PASCAL.ANSI-ISO.
The ISO Pascal standards, documents in various formats.
ISO 7185 source programs. Here you will find programs I have collected that compile under ANSI/ISO rules, including sample Pascal compilers.
Yacc/flex parsing grammar for ISO 7185 standard Pascal. These are the files needed to form a parser front end for Pascal.
All about the CDC 6400 computer, the original development computer for Wirth's Pascal.
CDC 6000 Pascal, source for the original compiler for Pascal.
Pascal-P, the portable compiler/interpreter for Pascal.
Pictures from a lecture by Wirth held at the Computer Museum on 2004/10/20
The complete online collection of the PUG (Pascal Users Group) newsletters in .PDF format.
My critique of the ISO 10206 Extended Pascal Standard
Usage rights to material on this website
That &^%$ annoying background on this website
