XPost: alt.folklore.computers
From: robin_listas@es.invalid
On 2026-01-05 21:35, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Peter Flass writes:
>> On 1/3/26 01:31, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>> "The statement "Pascal has no I/O" originates from
>>> Brian Kernighan’s 1981 essay, "Why Pascal is Not My Favorite Programming
>>> Language".
>>>
>>> Kernighan argued that the original 1970 definition of Pascal was
>>> severely limited for systems programming because:
>>>
>>> No Low-Level Access: The language lacked a way to override its
>>> strict type system, making it impossible to write its own I/O systems or
>>> memory allocators *within the language itself*.
>>>
>>> Fixed Array Sizes: Because array size was part of the type, a
>>> function could not be written to handle strings or arrays of different
>>> lengths, complicating general-purpose file I/O.
>>>
>>> Lack of Portability: Standard Pascal’s I/O was considered
>>> "primitive," and any real-world use required implementation-specific
>>> extensions that broke portability between compilers."
>>>
>>
>> Actually, many systems programming languages have no I/O, the idea being
>> that non-OS programs call the OS to do the I/O, and the OS interacts
>> directly with the hardware.
>
> I did quite a bit of systems programming in VAX-11 Pascal. Digital
> had extended the language to include the ability to call all the standard
> system services directly from Pascal.
>
> [INHERIT('SYS$SHARE:STARLET'),
> IDENT('V03-001')]
>
> PROGRAM Users( OUTPUT );
>
> TYPE
> Unsigned_byte = [BYTE] 0..255;
> Signed_word = [WORD] -32768..+32767;
> Unsigned_word = [WORD] 0..65535;
>
> jpi$item = [BYTE(12)] PACKED RECORD
> Buffer_length: [POS(0)] Unsigned_word;
> Item_code: [POS(16)] Unsigned_word;
> Buffer_address: [POS(32),LONG,UNSAFE] UNSIGNED;
> Buflen_address: [POS(64),LONG,UNSAFE] UNSIGNED;
> END;
>
...
They did not teach us any of that when we learnt Pascal in a vax at uni.
Thanks for that insight.
--
Cheers, Carlos.
ES🇪🇸, EU🇪🇺;
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