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

[Dave Froble]

On 12/22/2019 11:36 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 12/21/2019 11:13 PM, Jonathan wrote:
>> On Thursday, December 19, 2019 at 7:28:34 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 12/19/2019 9:47 AM, John Reagan wrote:
>>>> 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...)
>>> It was a good choice.
>>>
>>> Lots of students was taught Pascal back then.
>>>
>>> Pascal is way more modern than Cobol, Fortran and Basic.
>>
>> I don't think Pascal circa 1975 was more modern than VAX Basic circa
>> 1985.  Of course the last time I wrote much Pascal code was about 1975
>> (using the Wirth CDC compiler :)
>
> I am far from an expert in VMS basic.
>
> But Pascal had the many of the language features that would dominate the
> next 20-30 years:
> * declarations required
> * common data types
> * 3 types of loops, if and cases
> * support for recursion
> * support for complex data structures (incl. variant record)
> * string type
> * pointer type (type safe)
>
> And on top of that a tradition among Pascal programmers for
> well structured procedural programming with not too long
> procedures/functions.
>
> Way more modern than Fortran.
>
> I would expect it to be more modern than VMS Basic as well.
> But as I said then VMS Basic is not something I know well.

Back a while, possibly mid to late 1980s, not sure, it appears that 
DEC's compiler people took a look at things, and decided that many if 
not all the languages could be set up to do similar things.  Basic got 
structures via the RECORD definition, and other enhancements.  The 
concept is rather simple, if an operation can be done in one language, 
then it also could be done in others.  All it takes is a little (or lot) 
of work.

A nice concept.

Of course, Basic still has some warts, (return from sub), extensive use 
of library routines, (good modular programming, but a performance hit). 
More a jack of all trades than speed at all costs.



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