Resources

Compilers and interpreters

Several Pascal compilers and interpreters are available for the use of general public:

• Delphi is CodeGear's (formerly Borland) flagship RAD (Rapid Application Development) product. It uses the Object Pascal language (Dubbed the 'Delphi programming language' by Borland), descended from Pascal, to create applications for the windows platform. The .NET support that existed from D8 through D2005,D2006 and D2007 has been terminated, and replaced by a new language (Prism, which is rebranded Oxygene, see below) that is not fully backwards compatible. The most recent iteration of the win32 range (D2009) adds unicode and generics support.
• Free Pascal is a multi-platform compiler written in Pascal (it is Self-hosting). It is aimed at providing a convenient and powerful compiler, both able to compile legacy applications and to be the means of developing new ones. It is distributed under the GNU GPL, while packages and runtime library come under a modified GNU LGPL. Apart from compatibility modes for Turbo Pascal, Delphi and Mac Pascal, it also has its own procedural and object oriented syntax modes with support for extended features such as operator overloading. It supports many platforms and operating systems.
• Lazarus is a Delphi-like visual cross-platform IDE for RAD (Rapid Application Development). Based on FreePascal, Lazarus is available for numerous platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.
• Dev-Pascal is a Pascal IDE that was designed in Borland Delphi and which supports both Free Pascal and GNU Pascal as backend. Contrary to its C++ sibling, it has not seen a significant release in years
• Oxygene (formerly known as Chrome) is a Next Generation Object Pascal compiler for the .NET and Mono Platforms. It was created and is sold by RemObjects Software, and recently by Codegear/Emarcadero as Prism It tries to carry the spirit of Pascal to .NET, but is not very compatible to other Pascals.
• Kylix was a descendant of Delphi, with support for the Linux operating system and an improved object library. The compiler and the IDE are available now for non-commercial use. The product is no longer supported by Borland.
• GNU Pascal Compiler (GPC) is the Pascal compiler of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). The compiler itself is written in C, the runtime library mostly in Pascal. Distributed freely under the GNU General Public License, it runs on many platforms and operating systems. It supports the ANSI/ISO standard languages and partial Borland/Turbo Pascal language support. One of the more painful omissions is the absence of a 100% TP compatible string type. Support for Borland Delphi and other language variations is quite limited, except maybe for Mac Pascal, the support for which is growing fast.
• Virtual Pascal was created by Vitaly Miryanov in 1995 as a native OS/2 compiler compatible with Borland Pascal syntax. Then, it had been commercially developed by fPrint, adding Win32 support, and in 2000 it became freeware. Today it can compile for Win32, OS/2 and Linux, and is mostly compatible with Borland Pascal and Delphi. Development on this compiler was canceled on April 4, 2005.
• P4 compiler, the basis for many subsequent Pascal-implemented-in-Pascal compilers, including the UCSD p-System. It implements a subset of full Pascal.
• P5 compiler, is an ISO 7185 (full Pascal) adaption of P4.
• Turbo Pascal was the dominant Pascal compiler for PCs during the 80s and early 90s, popular both because of its powerful extensions and extremely short compilation times. Turbo Pascal was compactly written and could compile, run, and debug all from memory without accessing disk. Slow floppy disk drives were common for programmers at the time, further magnifying Turbo Pascal's speed advantage. Currently, older versions of Turbo Pascal (up to 5.5) are available for free download from Borland's site.
• Turbo51 is a free Pascal compiler for the 8051 family of microcontrollers (uses Turbo Pascal 7 syntax)
• IP Pascal Implements the language "Pascaline" (named after Pascal's calculator), which is a highly extended Pascal compatible with original Pascal according to ISO 7185. It features modules with namespace control, including parallel tasking modules with semaphores, objects, dynamic arrays of any dimensions that are allocated at runtime, overloads, overrides, and many other extensions. IP Pascal has a built-in portability library that is custom tailored to the Pascal language. For example, a standard text output application from 1970's original Pascal can be recompiled to work in a window and even have graphical constructs added.
• PocketStudio is a Pascal subset compiler and RAD tool targeting Palm OS and MC68xxx processors with some own extensions to assist interfacing with the Palm OS API. It resembles Delphi and Lazarus with a visual form designer, an object inspector and a source code editor.
• MIDletPascal - A Pascal compiler and IDE that generates small and fast Java bytecode specifically designed to create software for mobiles
• Vector Pascal Vector Pascal is a language targeted at SIMD instruction sets such as the MMX and the AMD 3d Now, supporting all Intel and AMD processors, as well as the Sony Playstation 2 Emotion Engine.
• Morfik Pascal allows the development of Web applications entirely written in Object Pascal (both server and browser side).
• web Pascal is an online IDE and Pascal compiler.
• WDSibyl - Visual Development Environment and Pascal compiler for Win32 and OS/2
• PP Compiler, a compiler for Palm OS that runs directly on the handheld computer
• CDC 6000 Pascal compiler The source code for the first (CDC 6000) Pascal compiler.
• Pascal-S - "Pascal-S: A Subset and Its Implementation", N. Wirth in Pascal - The Language and Its Implementation, by D.W. Barron, Wiley 1979.

A very extensive list can be found on Pascaland. The site is in French, but it is basically a list with URLs to compilers; there is little barrier for non-Francophones. The site, Pascal Central, a Mac centric Pascal info and advocacy site with a rich collection of article archives, plus links to many compilers and tutorials, may also be of interest.

Standards

In 1983, the language was standardized, in the international standard IEC/ISO 7185, as well as several local country specific standards, including the American ANSI/IEEE770X3.97-1983, and ISO 7185:1983. These two standards differed only in that the ISO standard included a "level 1" extension for conformant arrays, where ANSI did not allow for this extension to the original (Wirth version) language. In 1989, ISO 7185 was revised (ISO 7185:1990) to correct various errors and ambiguities found in the original document.

In 1990, an extended Pascal standard was created as ISO/IEC 10206. In 1993 the ANSI standard was replaced by the ANSI organization with a "pointer" to the ISO 7185:1990 standard, effectively ending its status as a different standard.

The ISO 7185 was stated to be a clarification of Wirth's 1974 language as detailed by the User Manual and Report [Jensen and Wirth], but was also notable for adding "Conformant Array Parameters" as a level 1 to the standard, level 0 being Pascal without Conformant Arrays. This addition was made at the request of C. A. R. Hoare, and with the approval of Niklaus Wirth. The precipitating cause was that Hoare wanted to create a Pascal version of the (NAG) Numerical Algorithms Library, which had originally been written in FORTRAN, and found that it was not possible to do so without an extension that would allow array parameters of varying size. Similar considerations motivated the inclusion in ISO 7185 of the facility to specify the parameter types of procedural and functional parameters.

Note that Niklaus Wirth himself referred to the 1974 language as "the Standard", for example, to differentiate it from the machine specific features of the CDC 6000 compiler. This language was documented in "The Pascal Report", the second part of the "Pascal users manual and report".

On the large machines (mainframes and minicomputers) Pascal originated on, the standards were generally followed. On the IBM-PC, they were not. On IBM-PCs, the Borland standards Turbo Pascal and Delphi have the greatest number of users. Thus, it is typically important to understand whether a particular implementation corresponds to the original Pascal language, or a Borland dialect of it.

The IBM-PC versions of the language began to differ with the advent of UCSD Pascal, an interpreted implementation that featured several extensions to the language, along with several omissions and changes. Many UCSD language features survive today, including in Borland's dialect.

Divisions

Niklaus Wirth's Zurich version of Pascal was issued outside of ETH in two basic forms, the CDC 6000 compiler source, and a porting kit called Pascal-P system. The Pascal-P compiler left out several features of the full language. For example, procedures and functions used as parameters, undiscriminated variant records, packing, dispose, interprocedural gotos and other features of the full compiler were omitted.

UCSD Pascal, under Professor Kenneth Bowles, was based on the Pascal-P2 kit, and consequently shared several of the Pascal-P language restrictions. UCSD Pascal was later adopted as Apple Pascal, and continued through several versions there. Although UCSD Pascal actually expanded the subset Pascal in the Pascal-P kit by adding back standard Pascal constructs, it was still not a complete standard installation of Pascal.

Borland's Turbo Pascal, written by Anders Hejlsberg, was written in assembly language independent of UCSD or the Zurich compilers. However, it adopted much of the same subset and extensions as the UCSD compiler. This is probably because the UCSD system was the most common Pascal system suitable for developing applications on the resource-limited microprocessor systems available at that time.

List of related standards

• ISO 8651-2:1988 Information processing systems—Computer graphics—Graphical Kernel System (GKS) language bindings—Part 2: Pascal