🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <GLENN.91May3123813@curie.ces.cwru.edu> glenn@curie.ces.cwru.edu (Glenn Crocker) writes:
>The nationals contest was beautiful last year.  I had no problem with
>how the problems were stated or with how the contest was run.  The
>regional contest I went to this year, however....

  Glad to hear nationals turned out well; hopefully your regional
contest will be better next year.  Hmm...do most regions have a lot of
communication between the people holding the contests each year?  The
problem (at least one) with the regional contests is that they keep
moving around, and so people don't get as much experience with them.
(At least, it seems that way, though the regionals I've been at were
quite good, especially the first year.)

I wrote earlier:

>     BTW, is anyone else upset that Turbo Pascal is commonly used at
>   contests rather than Standard Pascal?  :-/  Probably not.
>
>No.  Turbo Pascal is standard Pascal.  Live with it or don't use Pascal.
>(Sorry, a little bigotry here.  I use C anyways.)

  Well, the problem I have with it is that it's a particular dialect
of the language, and that people are likely to learn different
dialects.  I hope that all universities which teach Pascal at least
tell their students *what* the standard is, and where the
implementation they're using differs.  (Of course, there are three
standards--ANSI, and the two ISO levels--but....)

  For instance, I learned Pascal on a UCSD-based system, and when I
went to college, under VMS.  These don't have much in common, except
for the standard subset, which they implement essentially the same.
The real problem I have with Turbo is that, at least a few years ago,
its semantics for some of the standard I/O routines were *different*
from those of standard Pascal.  We went through about two weeks of
special practice before our regionals to teach ourselves just what the
difference were.

>Is it actually possible to program in Standard Pascal, or do all
>Pascal compilers have hacks to make the language usable for real
>work?  (i.e. assign(), reset(), etc.)

  Sure, it's possible to program in Standard Pascal.  You're not
likely to be able to do much "real work" using it, but I haven't seen
any contests in which the Standard Pascal subset was a hindrance.
I've been at a regional contest which used strictly standard Pascal
(it was on a VMS system, compiled with /STANDARD, which flags any
differences from the standard--programs which weren't standard were
not acceptable).

  Most compilers do have extensions, but they're all quite different,
it seems.  I'd prefer to see ACM promoting the standard (and if the
Pascal standards aren't good enough for "real work", maybe somebody
should ponder extending the standards...of course, Extended Pascal is
starting to get implemented now, or whatever it's called).

  Ah well.  It is something that people should keep in mind, I think.

	Anton
   
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| Anton Rang (grad student) | rang@cs.wisc.edu | UW--Madison | "VMS Forever!" |
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