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Re: Reading command line in Pascal

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On 26/04/2021 07:50, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On 2021-04-25 17:52, David Brown wrote:
>> On 25/04/2021 16:33, Peter wrote:
>>> Öö Tiib wrote:
>>>> On Sunday, 25 April 2021 at 15:47:04 UTC+3, Peter wrote:
>>>>> How, in standard Pascal (ISO/IEC 7185:1990), does one read the
>>>>> command line?
>>>>
>>>> One does not as that standard does not have concept of command line.
>>>
>>> Yet another example of the language's silliness!
>>
>> It is not an "example of silliness".  It is simply not something covered
>> in the standard, because different Pascal implementations need
>> significantly different ways of getting command line information (and
>> there are plenty of Pascal implementations for which "command line"
>> doesn't even make sense).  A language standard is never intended to
>> cover everything about particular implementations, or cover everything
>> that is needed for all coding in the language.
> 
> That would be a great SILLINESS, as the language must be capable of
> abstraction an implementation.
> 
> I do not remember Pascal well, but I think it was not that silly. (Maybe
> the original Wirth's one was)
> 
> Thus it is rather a lesser kind of silliness: not to provide a standard
> library to access the program environment.
> 

Again, this is confusing language standards and language implementation.
 And it is dependent on the language, its aims, and its portability.
Based on my memory of the history, Pascal was designed to be a language
that was useful, but easy to learn - which meant keeping it small.  It
was intended that Pascal implementations could be made on a very wide
variety of systems - but not that Pascal programs should be portable
between such systems.  Parts of Pascal /code/ could be portable, but it
was more important that the knowledge and understanding was portable.

Compare this to C, where the intention was that real programs could be
written in C and compiled directly on a range of systems (as well as
supporting system-specific programs).  Thus the C standard had to cover
a good deal more than the Pascal standard.

Or at a greater extreme, Java defines things in far more detail with the
aim of "right once, run everywhere" - meaning it is only useable on a
smaller subset of systems, but programs are more portable.

There is no question of "silliness" here - it's just a matter of the
level of detail that you specify in the standard, and what you leave up
to particular implementations.

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Reading command line in Pascal Peter <peterxpercival@hotmail.com> - 2021-04-25 13:47 +0100
  Re: Reading command line in Pascal Öö Tiib <ootiib@hot.ee> - 2021-04-25 07:23 -0700
    Re: Reading command line in Pascal Peter <peterxpercival@hotmail.com> - 2021-04-25 15:33 +0100
      Re: Reading command line in Pascal David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-25 17:52 +0200
        Re: Reading command line in Pascal "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2021-04-26 07:50 +0200
          Re: Reading command line in Pascal David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-26 08:33 +0200
            Re: Reading command line in Pascal "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2021-04-26 10:21 +0200
              Re: Reading command line in Pascal David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-26 10:46 +0200
            Re: Reading command line in Pascal Peter <peterxpercival@hotmail.com> - 2021-04-29 17:54 +0100
          Re: Reading command line in Pascal Peter <peterxpercival@hotmail.com> - 2021-04-29 17:52 +0100
            Re: Reading command line in Pascal Peter <peterxpercival@hotmail.com> - 2021-04-29 18:44 +0100
        Re: Reading command line in Pascal Peter <peterxpercival@hotmail.com> - 2021-04-29 17:55 +0100
          Re: Reading command line in Pascal "Alf P. Steinbach" <alf.p.steinbach+usenet@gmail.com> - 2021-05-05 20:20 +0200
            Re: Reading command line in Pascal Melzzzzz <Melzzzzz@zzzzz.com> - 2021-05-06 08:46 +0000
              Re: Reading command line in Pascal "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2021-05-06 11:55 +0200
                Re: Reading command line in Pascal Melzzzzz <Melzzzzz@zzzzz.com> - 2021-05-06 10:06 +0000
                Re: Reading command line in Pascal An iM <uavyuayve@hotmail.com> - 2021-08-27 11:27 -0700

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