Pascal Interview Question:

Why is nOt IP Pascal compatible with Turbo/Borland®/Dephi®/Kylix Pascal?

Submitted by: Administrator

A. IP Pascal was designed to follow the original Pascal standard since 1980, following Niklaus Wirth's "The Pascal User Manual and report" [Jensen and Wirth] from 1974. In 1983, the ISO 7185 standard was released, and the minor changes to J&W Pascal were implemented in IP Pascal.

Unfortunately, none of the Borland products followed either the "User Manual and Report" nor the ISO 7185 Pascal standard, even though it preceeded Borland® implementations by a decade. Borland® products have a large user base, and we respect that, and hope to provide tools to convert user's Borland® compatible products to IP Pascal for interoperation.

For IP Pascal to have been compatible with Borland® products, considerable changes away from standard Pascal would have been required. Also, since there is no official published Borland® language standard, there would be no way to guarantee perfect compatibility with Borland® products. Finally, IP Pascal is directed at a long term standard implementation. Borland® products have traditionally been machine and operating system dependent. The different Borland® products, Turbo Pascal, Borland® Pascal, Borland® Windows Pascal, Delphi® and Kylix, are not completely compatible with each other, and would have been a moving target during the many years IP Pascal has been in operation.
Submitted by: Administrator