Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    I was told last night that Amiga Pascal is not a good compiler.
    Apparently it has no External declaration, so you can get to the
    operating system's facilities only through the (very limited)
    Pascal run-time system.  This Pascal was characterized as a "toy".
    
    I don't have any personal experience with it; this is just what
    I was told by an Amiga 1000 owner.
        John Sauter

    
    Several (all?) people who wanted Pascal including myself have decided
    to get Modula-2 instead. It is very much like Pascal and was written
    by the same guy who wrote Pascal. So it is his version of the next
    step better. There is another note about Pascal/Modula-2 which will
    probably turn up by searching for Modula or Pascal.
    
    I haven't used the Modula-2 much so I can't really provide the user's
    perspective, but others here can.
    
       mitch

    Thanks for the info.  I have to say that I prefer Modula-II to
    Pascal myself.  I have the TDI Modula-II compiler v.3 and am
    pretty happy with it.  A friend of mine is taking a class at
    Boston University and she wanted to do her Pascal work on my
    Amiga.  Unfortunately, it doesn't look like a good Amiga Pascal
    compiler exists and her instructor won't let her use Modula-II
    instead.  
    
    Brad

    I am an unhappy owner of the MCC pascal (Amiga Pascal)_ and I can
    tell you that it is infact a very limited compiler from about any
    standpoint. It does do some exteranl calls to 'c' programs, but
    ther is absolutely no documentation included with the system other
    than a nifty ISO pascal reference manual included.  The speed is
    reasonable, and it doesn't hog incredible amounts of memory, but
    a simple statement like 
    
    i:integer;
    .
    .
    .
    case I of
         1:.....
     
    wont work because the domain of integer's is too large for the case
    statement.  Not very astute compilier I'd say.
     
    Compared to turbo-pascal opn a pc, this is horrid!  It has the feel
    of a Pascal compilier written 10 years ago, since nice things like
    strings aren't implemented at all.  If you need a Pascal compilier
    at any cost, this is okay, but it drove me to write in 'C'.
    
    Robb

    Yes, I'm still waiting for Turbo-Pascal to arrive for Amiga... any
    news in this area? I still think it's the best compiler for
    small-to-medium (home computer) projects (small < 1000 lines, medium
    < 10,000 lines in my scale).
    
    I tried a friend's TDI Modula but it's a long time ago, I didn't
    like it, too buggy, slow and cumbersome. Maybe the latest & greatest
    is better.
    

    If Turbo-Pacal for the Amiga ever arrives, I'll probably buy it.
    As far as TDI-Modula-II goes, ver 3 isn't as buggy as prior versions
    and if you have about 1.5 Meg and create a RAM disk the speed is
    reasonable.  A friend of mine just bought a newly released Modula-II
    compiler that he says is very good.  I'll get the latest info. on
    it and pass it along.
    
    Brad

    Here's some information on OXXI's Benchmark Modula-II.  A few friends
    of mine have used the compiler and are quite happy with it.
    
    The environment is similar to Turbo Pascal.  The editor is EMACS
    (no need to learn another editor).  From what I am told it is
    fast and contains relatively few bugs.
    
    Brad

    Since I am the proud owner of V1.25 of MCC pascal I once again brushed
    it off the self this weekend and fired it up again.  It seems not
    to work more than once per machine booting.  I am compiling a 1500
    line ray-tracing program I wrote in  VMS pascal (not a easy port BTW)
    and have used both BLINK and ALINK to link it.  Immediately after the
    Compilier finishes the dreaded Task Held requestor appears. Anyone
    else experience this same problem?  One interesting effect is the
    alert saying ``Volume VD0: has a Read/Write ERROR'' that appears
    occasionally as well.
    
    looks like M2Amiga is looking better every day!
    
    Robb
    

Re: .8

Your problem is that you are running out of memory.  If VD0: cannot allocate
memory, it signals a problem to someone (trackdisk.device?) that just ignores
the situation.  The net result is that the VD0: becomes corrupted.  I have
had my machine even guru when VD0: becomes corrupt and I attempt to read
it.

Now you know why the documentation for VD0: says that you should pick a
maximum size for the device in your mountlist that is small enough that
the VD0: becomes full before running out of memory.

This could be the cause that Pascal only seems to be able to run once.