Learn Pascal in a Three Days (2nd Ed.)
(Publisher: Wordware Publishing, Inc.)
Author(s):
ISBN: 1556225679
Publication Date: 07/01/97

Preface

This book is designed to teach you Pascal in a very short period of time. The method used in the book is that of learning by example. You start with simple programs which crunch some numbers and print some strings, and you end up with useful applications using structured programs.

Historically, Pascal was developed by Niklaus Wirth (a Swiss computer scientist) in the early 1970s and was named after the French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). A recent standard for the language was formulated in 1983 and approved by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). With the growing use of microcomputers extensions and variations have been added to the language, the most popular of which are UCSD Pascal (developed by University of California at San Diego) and Turbo Pascal (developed by Borland International). The goal of this book is to teach you how to write a portable program in Pascal regardless of the computer you use, so the standard IEEE/ANSI will mainly be used, but the new features will be discussed and their origins referred to. The book is not intended to go into the details of the nonportable areas of the language (such as graphics), but rather to make use of the powerful features of the modern implementations (especially Turbo Pascal) that help in data processing. The programs included in this book were compiled using Turbo Pascal, but you can use any compiler to run them. In a very few places you may need to make minor modifications, which will be referenced.

Sam A. Abolrous

About the Companion Diskette

The companion diskette contains the source code of the examples and the solutions of the drills that are in this book. The companion diskette contains a Readme file to show the user how to use the disk. Place the diskette in drive A (or B) and log onto that drive. Type Readme and press Enter.