[Simh] anyone know how to convert/translate turbo pascal to vax pascal?

[Gary Lee Phillips]

It could, but the error message should make that clear. If the compiler
rejects the syntax that's a different message from a linkage error.

I wrote working system code in VAX Pascal but it was back in the 80s. Some
of my work was accepted for publication in fact. I also did some
substantial work in Turbo Pascal at about that time. But to be honest, I
haven't touched Pascal for years now. Even so, I do know that VMS Pascal
will support the language standards just as it always did. The problem with
writeln is likely to be non-standard syntax, as Turbo Pascal accepted a lot
of short cuts. I suspect the big issues with the project in question are
more likely going to be related to graphics.

--Gary


On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 7:10 AM, Tim Shoppa <tshoppa at gmail.com> wrote:

> Could the writeln issue, be a link time and not compile time? I remember
> having to specify the Pascal runtime libraries (more than one?) at link
> time.
>
> Tim
>
> > On Feb 8, 2018, at 7:51 AM, Gary Lee Phillips <tivo.overo at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > VMS Pascal conforms to the language standards. So does Turbo Pascal, if
> the code is written to standard.
> >
> > The problem with porting in Pascal comes when language extensions are
> used. These are often proprietary and/or hardware specific. On OpenVMS much
> of the extended capability depends on calling system libraries, all of
> which are supported. Turbo Pascal was designed specifically for the IBM PC
> and "compatible" systems, and contains a lot of proprietary extensions that
> will not be recognized by VMS Pascal's compiler.
> >
> > If your code depends on graphic functions, the ones in Turbo Pascal are
> almost entirely peculiar to that environment and will require a lot of
> rewriting. These use custom libraries that come with the compiler, and
> probably most can be duplicated by using OpenVMS system calls in some
> format. Some analysis will be required to identify the hardware specific
> code and select appropriate substitutions.
> >
> > As for "free pascal" there are several incompatible implementations that
> go by the name, so I'm not sure what you have used. However, all of them
> pretty much support the original language definition and code that stays
> within that standard definition will work without translation. Extensions
> that use library calls or custom units are going to be the area that
> requires (possibly a lot of) work.
> >
> > The full VMS Pascal manuals are available in PDF form online and you
> should begin there.
> >
> > By the way, VMS Pascal definitely supports writeln. It also has record
> structures, etc. Those are all part of the standard language definition.
> We'd need to see a sample of your code that doesn't work in order to figure
> out where your problem comes from.
> >
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>
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