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Pascal (programming language)

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The Pascal programming language was developed by Niklaus Wirth as a simple language to parse, as it only required a single token of look ahead, but which is an example of a language that supports structured programming. Wirth named the language in honor of Blaise Pascal.


The Pascal dialect at UCSD began as a hybrid language, aimed at being machine independent by having a common syntax interpreted into machine-dependent pseudocode which could then be executed by the final machine. As hardware became standardized on the IBM-Intel designs, the necessity for machine independence became less prominent. Although there are still Pascal interpreters available, there are compilers as well for many machines. These compilers frequently use today's large memories to accomplish both the first and second stage of processing.

In the PC community, an early inexpensive Pascal compiler was distributed by the Borland software company. This earned Pascal many hobbyist users during the 1980's.

Several Pascal compilers are available for the use of general public:

  • GNU Pascal Compiler (GPC) is an additional front-end to the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), and is written in C. Distributed freely under the GPL.
  • FreePascal is written in Pascal (so that it compile itself), and is aimed at providing a convenient and powerful compiler, able both to compile legacy applications and to be the means of develop new ones. Also distributed freely under the GPL.
  • Turbo Pascal was the dominant Pascal compiler for PCs during the 80s and early 90s, popular both because of its powerful extensions and extremely low compilation times. Currently, older versions of Turbo Pascal (up to 5.5) are available for free download from Borland's site (registration required).
  • Kylix is Borland's newest reiteration of the Pascal branch of their products. It is the descendant of Delphi, with support for the Linux operating system and an improved object library. The compiler and the IDE are available now for non-commercial use. The compiler (but not the library or the IDE) is supposed to become Open Source software some time soon.
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