Jukka Virtanen wrote:

...

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can one convert a string of length one into a char?

ie the below wont work:

program t(input,output); var ch:char; s:string(10); begin s:='teststring'; writeln(substr(s,2,1)); ch:=substr(s,2,1); writeln(ord(ch)); end.

Yes, one can. The correct assignment reads

ch:= s [ 2 ];

I think, this is Standard Pascal, nothing special. At least, it is common between UCSD, Borland and GNU Pascal.

    In extended pascal it is also allowed to assign a string
    to a char if the length of the string is 1, which is the case
    here.

you are welcome :)

but note that i _can_ do the assignment via:

readstr(substr(s,2,1),ch);

    I think you found a bug in gpc, thanks for the report :-)

                                            Juki
                                            jtv@hut.fi