New Alpha

Tue, 1 Apr 1997 17:59:11 +0200 (MET DST)

Hello folks,

it's time again for a new GPC alpha version.

Changes since gpc-970227:

  * Field widths now default to left-justified output.

  * Some bugs fixed concerning field widths.

  * Strings being too long for the field are now output completely
    if `--borland-pascal' has been specified.

  * `For' now accepts components of structured variables as control
    variables, e.g. "for myarray [ i ]:= 1 to 100 do ...".

  * `--pedantic-errors' no more implies `--pedantic'.  Like this, you
    can specify `--pedantic-errors --extended-pascal' and you will get
    error messages when using Borland extensions, but no warnings for
    ISO 7185 Standard Pascal violations (i.e. the ISO 10206 extensions).

  * Fixed bug concerning empty sets.

  * Fixed bug concerning Strings without specified capacity as value
    parameters.

  * Initialized sets now work in procedures.  (They still don't work
    in the main program or in the top level of a Unit.)-:

  * Fixed bug concerning arrays as `Const' parameters.

  * `Char' subranges like 'A'..'Z' work again.  (Was broken in
    gpc-970115.)

  * `Const' parameters of known, small size are passed by value now.
    In this cases, `Const' is equivalent to `protected'; otherwise
    `Const' is equivalent to `protected Var'.

  * Now you can pass constant values to `Const' or `protected Var'
    parameters.

  * In Extended Pascal Modules, the following features have been
    implemented:

      - Export and import renaming,
      - `protected' export,
      - `only' import.

  * Fixed some bugs in the GPI mechanism, in particular concerning
    pointers and `Var' parameters.

  * `Asm' works again.  (It was broken in gpc-970115 - and it still
    has problems with input and output registers.)-:

  * Fixed a bug concerning conformant arrays.  If you have programs which
    use conformant arrays GPC didn't compile up to now, please retry
    and report remaining bugs.

  * `New' applied to "^String" variables (i.e. pointers to String Schemas
    without specified capacity) works now:  you call `New' with a second
    parameter being the desired capacity of the newly allocated String.

The source - a diff against gpc-970226 - is being uploaded to

    ftp://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/gnu-pascal/alpha/

Binaries for DOS (DJGPP), Linux (ELF), and FreeBSD will follow this
evening after 21 o' clock MET (when it will be less expensive).

I thank Berend de Boer for many useful bug reports and the donation of
a licensed copy of the Prospero Extended Pascal compiler.  I also thank
Stephen Lindholm, Tomas Srb, Miklos Cserzo, and Frank Heckenbach for
reporting the bugs mentioned above.  (* If I forgot your name, it's a
bug - please report. ;*)  And I thank everybody on the GPC mailing list
for fruitful discussions about the future of GPC.

I hope you had a happy Eastern.

Yours,

    Peter

  Dipl.-Phys. Peter Gerwinski, Essen, Germany, free physicist and programmer
peter.gerwinski@uni-essen.de - http://home.pages.de/~peter.gerwinski/ [970201]
       maintainer GNU Pascal - http://home.pages.de/~gnu-pascal/ [970125]

Peter Gerwinski (peter@agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de)