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Question. Is Irie Pascal compatible with Turbo Pascal?
Answer. No. Although both Irie Pascal and Turbo Pascal support Standard Pascal (more or less),
they also each support some extensions that the other does not. It is unlikely that you
will be able to port any significant program from one to the other without making major
modifications.
Question. My Pascal program does not work with Irie Pascal even
though it works with another Pascal compiler. What's wrong?
Answer. There are many different dialects of the Pascal programming language, and each Pascal compiler tends to
support a slightly different dialect. There are two main dialects of Pascal. One main dialect is the official standard for Pascal
(called Standard Pascal). Standard Pascal is defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and is known
officially as ISO/IEC 7185. Irie Pascal supports almost all of Standard Pascal with a few documented exceptions. The other main
dialect is the one supported by Turbo Pascal. For many years, Turbo Pascal was the most popular Pascal compiler and so when many
people think of Pascal they think of the Turbo Pascal dialect.
Almost all Pascal compilers (including Irie Pascal) support Standard Pascal, meaning they will compile programs that follow the
Standard Pascal rules. However almost all Pascal compilers also support extra features that are not a part of Standard Pascal, but
the problem with this is that different compilers support different extra features, and support them in different ways. So the result
is that if you write your program in Standard Pascal then it will probably work with almost all Pascal compilers, but if you use
extra features that are not a part of Standard Pascal then your programs become more compiler specific and will only work with some
compilers. In some cases, if you use extra features that are supported by only one compiler then your programs will only work with
that one compiler.
Question. Is there any way I can write a program that directs (writes) output to a printer?
Answer. Irie Pascal does not really support printing. However you can taker advantage of the support for printing,
built into Windows (see below for more details). Please note however that although the technique described below seems to work it is
not officially supported (in other words, use at your own risk).
Anyway, the official word on printing using Irie Pascal is below:
Irie Pascal does not directly support generating programs that can print to a printer. However in most cases, you can write programs
that will print through Windows. The basic idea is to define a text file variable, and assign it a name that either refers to a
printer port or the name of a printer on the network. Then you open the file variable (using rewrite) and use the file variable to
send output to the printer (using write or writeln).
To print to a printer attached to the first printer port (i.e. parallel port) on your computer, use 'LPT1:' as the name assigned
to the file variable (NOTE: The colon at the end of the name is required). If that doesn't work you might try the names 'PRN' or 'PRN1'.
To print to a printer over the network, you need the name of the printer on the network (it will probably look something like
'\\network-path\printer'). You may need to consult your network admin (unless of course, you are the network admin).
Question. Can I write a program that uses graphics?
Answer. No, you can't use Irie Pascal to create programs that use Windows graphics, fonts, menus etc.
Question. The compiler gives me line references for errors but these line numbers do
not show up in the written program. So how do I know which line is being referred to?
Answer. The compiler is just numbering your program from the first line (line number 1) to the last line,
incrementing by one each time. So for example, if your program has 20 lines then each line is numbered from 1 to 20 starting with the
first line. I am not sure if I answered your question, you might have been asking how do you get the the line in your program that
the error messages are referring to.
If you are using the Windows version of Irie Pascal and you are using the Irie Pascal IDE then the easiest way to get to the line
in your program referenced by an error message is to double-click on the error message and the IDE will take you to the place in your
program were the error was detected. You can also press Ctrl-G to go to any line in your program, the IDE will ask you to enter a
line number and then it will take you to that line. Also as you move around in the editor you can always tell your line number and
column position by looking at the two numbers seperated by a colon in the status bar at the bottom of the IDE window, the first number
is the line number and the second number is the column position.
If you are not using the Irie Pascal IDE then the text editor you are using probably has a way to go to a particular line.
Question. What's the command for clearing the screen in Irie Pascal?
Answer. The built-in procedure "clrscr" can be used to clear the screen. However
"clrscr" is only supported on the Windows and DOS versions of Irie Pascal.
Because Irie Pascal runs on so many different platforms it is difficult to take maximum
advantage of each platform. So far the priority has been on developing features that can
be easily ported to all supported platforms. Unfortunately I/O (advanced console,
graphics, sound etc) tends to be very non-portable and has so far not been fully
implemented.
Question. How do I search directories using Irie Pascal?
Answer. In Irie Pascal directories are just lists of filenames (I am using the term list in the
general sense, I'm not referring to the special list type). Most operating systems don't
allow you to manipulate directories using the file procedures, so Irie Pascal provides a
separate group of procedures for
manipulating directories. These procedures are "opendir",
"readdir", "rewinddir", and "closedir".
Before you can use a directory you have to open it using "opendir".
Once a directory is opened, you can use "readdir" to read the
name of the next file in the directory. Each time you use "readdir"
it advances to the next file. "rewinddir" moves back to the
first file. When you have finished reading the directory you should close it using "closedir".
The sample program "listdir.pas" is a simple program that
shows how to use most of the built-in directory procedures. Take a look at "listdir.pas"
(in the samples directory) and experiment with it if you like.
Question. When I compiled my program I had expected it to indent (tab) my program
but it did not. How do I get it to do this?
Answer. Sorry, but Irie Pascal does not automatically indent your programs.
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