On 13 Oct 2001, at 6:45, CBFalconer wrote:
My contention is that output is *ALWAYS* implicitly used, in order to report range errors, etc.
I don't see where that contention is supported by the ISO 7185 standard. Clearly, if the program-parameter-list is optional, it cannot be always required, else it would not be optional. Can you cite a statement from the standard to support your conclusion? The ISO standard is available from:
http://www.pascal-central.com/standards.html
...if you don't have a copy handy.
Moreover, one of the examples that accompanies section 6.10 of the ISO standard is:
program copy (f, g); var f, g : file of real; begin reset(f); rewrite(g); while not eof(f) do begin g^ := f^; get(f); put(g) end end.
Nary an "output" in sight (although examples are not normative).
I definitely remember that this was included in the original test suite.
"The original test suite" of what?
Horrors. I consider that fundamental.
Be welcome to contribute a fix. ;-) Seriously, that is the one certain way of ensuring that GPC has the feature support that you want. (As an aside, I happen to agree that range checking is important, though not as fundamental as ensuring that syntactic requirements are enforced strictly in standards-compliant modes.)
I thought I read that it would compile c, cpp, etc source if the source files carried those extensions.
A GPC build from source does create a C compiler as a side-effect of the process. However, C libraries and headers are not included in the GPC source distribution, so its utility is limited. C++ is not included.
Sorry, I had the impression that you were one of those.
I appreciate the compliment, but I'm just one of the 200 or so names listed as the "other contributors" on the "Contributors to GPC" page of the manual.
Is development moribund?
I wouldn't say so. If you look at the "ChangeLog" for the source code, you will find multiple changes made in for each of the past months of this year. A peek at the CVS snapshots directory:
ftp://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/gnu-pascal/alpha/
...also shows quite a number of releases in 2001.
-- Dave