Pascal Interview Question:

What is standard Pascal?

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Pascal is one of a series of languages put forth by one of the most prolific computer language creators, Niklaus Wirth, a professor at Institut fur informatik, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland. Professor Wirth participated in various versions of Algol, a language put forth by international cooperation that introduced the basic concepts of structured programming to the world. Wirth terms Pascal as a descendant of Algol 60 (for Algol, 1960 standard). The "official" descendant of Algol 60 was Algol 68, famous for having assignment as an expression operator (a basic feature of the later language C). Wirth felt that the design committee for Algol, after Algol 60, was losing focus and creating an unnecessarily complex language.

While Algol W has had it's fans, the language Pascal was considered to be a new high of consistent language design. The first draft of Pascal was created in 1968. The first compiler was operational in 1970, and the language was generally published in 1971. In 1973, after two years of testing and use, the language was revised into it's final form. That was detailed by "The Pascal User Manual and Report".
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