🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct27.143849.26947@texhrc.uucp> pyeatt@Texaco.com (Larry D. Pyeatt) writes:
|I would not classify C and Pascal as very nearly the same thing.  C does
|almost no type checking, does not have the set type, only handles arrays
|between 0 and N, performs almost no run-time checking, passes parameters 
|differently, allows variable length parameter lists, cannot nest functions,
|has a more flexible FOR statement...  

I don't know; both languages provide optional, inadequate type checking;
both languages have completely implementation-oriented type systems;
both provide small amounts of syntactic sugar for bitmaps (sets or bit
arithmetic, who cares? Neither has sets of integers, e.g.); both use
strange hacks to get variable-length parameter lists (Pascal's is
reserved to the implementation, but it's there sure enough); both lack
proper function values; both provide explicit pointer values; both
place the burden of storage management on the user; both have really
stupid type declaration syntax.

Probably the most substantial difference between them is that C permits
variable initialisers.

|You could say that Pascal and Modula-2 are very nearly the same, but C
|has very little in common with Pascal other than that they both can
|be called ``block structured'' languages.

They're both Algol 68 downgrades. It's hard to find languages that are
more similar without actually being direct descendants, one of the
other.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
stephen p spackman                                       stephen@acm.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------