[Info-vax] Pascal question

[John Reagan]

On Monday, January 21, 2019 at 8:34:32 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 1/21/2019 8:23 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> > On 1/21/19 6:56 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> >> Actually, while at the risk of wasting your valuable time, I'd ask, 
> >> why would Pascal as implemented by you not already have such a 
> >> function? Understand, I don't use Pascal.  Was string handling not a 
> >> featured part of the language?
> > 
> > The original Pascal as defined by Niklaus Wirth didn't have
> > a string type at all.
> 
> First version of his paper actually had an alfa type that seems
> very similar to a string.
> 
> In the 1973 version and forward it was all packed array of char.
> 
> Arne

ALFA was a PACKED ARRAY [1..10] OF CHAR.  60-bits to fit in a CDC-6400 register with 6-bit characters.

Extended Pascal added a variable string STRING() type that is almost identical to our VARYING OF CHAR type (which itself was modeled on PL/1's VARYING OF CHAR).

As for string manipulation, like upcase, it hasn't been a popular request.