On Sat, 05 Jan 2002 18:05:00 -0600 Douglas Adams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hello everyone, I'm new to the group. Can anyone reccomend a good > pascal compiler? For Linux? There's basically two-and-a-half of them: FreePascal (http://www.freepascal.org) GPC (http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/~gnu-pascal) p2c (search for p2c-1.20.tar.Z) FreePascal and GPC are both pretty good. FreePascal tries to be like Borland TurboPascal/ObjectPascal, while GPC tries to be more like ISO Pascal (but it embraces several standards including Borland's), see the respective websites for features, etc. Both are cross-platform, they work on Linux, DOS, the BSDs, and possibly OS/2 and Windows. GPC source is a rather large patch to GCC - which is to say that it uses the GCC "back end" to generate binary code. Note that if you were to download the GCC source code, it contains "front ends" for C, C++, Objective C, Java (in development), Fortran 77, and a couple of others. GPC fits in like that, only it's not included in the codebase. FreePascal is a completely independent compiler. It also has two decent IDE (integrated development environment, like the TurboPascal shell, only graphical) for it. One IDE is closed source, the other is open. Check out Lazarus at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org. Some nice screenshots there. p2c isnt recommended. It's a pascal-to-C converter - that is it translates pascal source into C source, which you then compile with gcc. It's really old. Which to choose? I've tried them both, but really only used GPC for any length of time. Since it's GCC based, it's pretty solid. Both have a good selection of Units, for linking up to things like graphical toolkits, compression, simple graphical drawing. The thing that might tip the balance in favor of FreePascal is the Lazarus graphical IDE. I chose GPC because it was a much easier compile (since I compile everything myself). If you're choosing binaries, i don't guess it matters. -- Mark Orr [EMAIL PROTECTED] ================================================ BRLUG - The Baton Rouge Linux User Group Visit http://www.brlug.net for more information. Send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to change your subscription information. ================================================
