Olin Lathrop wrote:

> William Chops" Westfield" wrote:
>> Please provide a pascal example that works with at least two
>> different vendors' pascal compilers.
> 
> No, you're missing the point again.  We're talking about computer
> science concepts, not particular implementations.  The point is that
> what you want to do is possible in a more tightly typed language like
> Pascal.  

I'm not sure I follow you. I at least never doubted that almost
everything that can be done with C can be done with any reasonable
Pascal dialect. I did much of it with Turbo Pascal... so this is not
really the question. And it's not the question Bill asked.

(FWIW, I think the main thing that C has that's missing from even decent
Pascal dialects is the precompiler. This is a quite useful tool for many
things the normal language can't do efficiently, but of course you can
use 3rd party preprocessors to help with that.)

But you're talking about popularity, availability. This is not a
computer science concept, this is a market concept. And for any language
to beat C in popularity in the (small micro embedded) market, it's not
enough that it is "better" in terms of computer science; the market
doesn't follow computer science concepts. 

This is the thing you seem to get confused. The reason why C is more
popular has nothing to do with computer science concepts, and the reason
why Pascal almost completely lost its edge (don't forget that it had its
shot, was almost there, then squandered it) has nothing to do with
computer science concepts either. 

As long as you dismiss the popularity of C as a big conspiracy of
idiots, you'll fail to learn the lesson from it (and to learn the lesson
from the fall into oblivion of Pascal). It could show you what is needed
for a language to become popular in a variety of markets. Bill's
question about code that works with two vendors' compilers goes in this
direction (and the "two vendors" part /is/ essential), and obviously has
nothing to do with computer science -- just as today's popularities of C
and Pascal have nothing to do with computer science.

Gerhard
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