[Info-vax] How Do You Define Record (Data Structure) Dummy Arguments in

[John Reagan]

On Thursday, December 19, 2019 at 7:56:38 AM UTC-5, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> On 12/19/19 5:18 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> > On 2019-12-18, John Reagan <xyzzy1959 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Wednesday, December 18, 2019 at 4:58:28 PM UTC-5, sector... at gmail.com wrote:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> DEC of course, included RDML and SQL preprocessors - and I think the PASCAL compiler was free - which I'm sure helped.
> >>>
> >>
> >>>
> >>> It?s also amazing how many serious applications (world-wide) are still written in FORTRAN ? obviously control systems, but also some very well-known financial application. FORTRAN was also a free VAX language which I?m sure added to its popularity in the financial arena.
> >>>
> >>
> >> None of the compilers were ever free.  Discounted deeply?  Perhaps.  But never free.
> > 
> > Was it free if you were on the licences that DEC provided to a University
> > for academic only use ?
> > 
> 
> I'm pretty sure CSRG was not free.  Just a real good deal.
> 
> bill

I was ignoring things like hobbyists licenses, etc.  Jon was commenting on the work that S7 has with Pascal conversions and was guessing why Pascal might have been as popular on OpenVMS in a commercial environment.  It wasn't due to Pascal being "cheaper" than other languages.

VAX Pascal V2 had an extensive set of language extensions compared to standard Wirth Pascal (aka ISO 7185).  You can actually write medium/large scale applications using the VAX Pascal V2 extensions.  I know of several customers with Pascal applications in the 10s-of-millions of lines.  VSI has active Pascal customers (I'm actually answering a technical question submitted to our support organization in another window...)