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by groos 50 days ago
Pascal, as defined by Wirth, had no "low level" features. E.g., no control over memory allocation other than the language provided new/dispose, no bit operators, clunky strings of fixed size, no access to system calls, no access to assembly, not even any hex or octal constants, all features which a language allowing "low level" access is expected to have (e.g. Ada, Modula-2/3, Oberon, all Pascal-derived languages). Things like conformant array parameters showed up much later in the ISO version but were not widely adopted. No modules either but this is not a low level feature. Turbo Pascal attempted to fix all this on the PC later on and it was deservedly well loved. Still, Wirth successfully wrote Pascal compilers in Pascal without --- obviously -- having a Pascal compiler available. [Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)#...)
1 comments

Many people seem to forget that Pascal evolved, and Wirth was very involved in that evolution. Wirth (as a consultant) helped create Object Pascal (from Apple), which then influenced Turbo Pascal and Delphi. Modula and Oberon are often referred to as influences on earlier or certain versions of Turbo Pascal (versions 4 to 5.5) as well.