From: erwann@abalea.com   
      
   Bonjour,   
      
   On Tue, 1 Feb 2005, RadSurfer wrote:   
      
   > It has several things that I need to learn how to do in TP 5.5.   
   > (In other words, convert C into native TP 5.5)   
      
   gpc ? ;)   
      
   > 2) C-style malloc() calls which must provide me with the proper   
   > Segment and Offset addresses respectively   
      
   malloc() and knowing the segment and offset parts of a pointer are 2   
   different things.   
      
   malloc() is New() or GetMem(), and the resulting memory is freed with   
   Release() or FreeMem(), respectively.   
      
   Ofs() returns the offset part of a pointer, Seg() the segment part.   
      
   > 3) Fundamental File I/O   
   > Open to Read, Write, and Append... seem simple enough.   
      
   Turbo Pascal has a "better" file abstraction than standard C. In TP, a   
   file can be typed (File of xxx, you then read or write elements of type   
   xxx), or typeless (simply a File, and you perform BlockRead and   
   BlockWrite that operate on octets).   
      
   > I imagine I'll have to learn which TPU's I'll have to "include" in my   
   > TP 5.5 applications to achieve these various operations...   
      
   Yes. In other words, you have to learn Turbo Pascal. Try to grab some old   
   books on it (I doubt you'll find new ones today), or the official   
   documentations that came with the product (Borland manuals were great at   
   this time). The language is really easy to learn, even with the OO part   
   added with TP55.   
      
   > Does anyone know of any URL's that show Benchmark tests of Borland   
   > Turbo   
   > Pascal, and Borland Pascal Compilers? This would prove most useful.   
      
   Useful for what? Turbo Pascal compiler is very fast, produces small   
   binaries (often smaller than feature-equivalent Turbo C compiled   
   programs), but is that useful? What is really useful is:   
    - what you can do with the language   
    - what is the speed of the program   
      
   I personally did everything I wanted with TP (and some parts of assembly).   
   I learned Turbo Vision 2 (I bought TP7 and its excellent documentation),   
   and honestly, TV is *the* text user interface: extensible, fast,   
   customizable. I produced a lot of programs with TP+TV, even profesionaly,   
   and I surely could still do it today, on my DOS machines.   
   But when it comes to developing for other platforms than DOS on a PC, or   
   working with a set of other developers, TP is out. In fact, I don't   
   program in TP anymore, even on my old DOS machines, I do C. That answers   
   the first question: you can do whatever you want in TP, the language   
   doesn't limit you to anything, but you'll be alone on obsolete machines.   
   That's still a good way to learn programming, though.   
      
   --   
   Erwann ABALEA  - RSA PGP Key ID: 0x2D0EABD5   
   -----   
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