C o - P A S C A L v2.0
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CP/M & MS-DOS implementations by : Charles Schoening
4012 Fulford St.
Olney, MD 20832



I. Notes about the Co-Pascal Compiler
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Co-Pascal is an extension of the Pascal-S
compiler (itself a subset of Pascal)
developed by Nikalus Wirth. Modifications
to the Pascal-C compiler were suggested by
M. Ben-Ari in Principles of Concurrent
Programming and implemented on a DEC VAX by
Barry Burd of Drew University. I enhanced
and modified the code to run under CP/M and
MS-DOS. Co-Pascal is written in Pascal and
optimized to run under Turbo-Pascal(tm).

Co-Pascal currently provides an excellent
environment for experimenting with
concurrent programming. It's well suited
for designing and testing of algorithums,
but it is not a full Pascal compiler and
does have some unfortunate restrictions.
For this reason, hoping that users will
enhance and update the compiler, and because
it a good chance to tinker with a compiler,
I am providing the Co-Pascal compiler in
its source code.



II. List of Known Problems and/or Limitations of Co-Pascal
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Some features common to other Pascal compilers are not
available in Co-Pascal.

Record types are not properly handled; no error or
warning message is issued. This improper handling
of record types MAY apply only to the use of record
types with the functions WAIT and SIGNAL.

Standard Features NOT supported :

. Sets, including the 'IN' operator
. GOTO and label's.
. Pointers
. the 'INPUT' parameter is required in EOF and EOLN
function calls (i.e. EOF(INPUT) ).
. File I/O is not yet available. The READ/WRITE
procedures for data files are currently under
construction.

The following limit values are in effect:

. 10 characters in identifier names
. 200 lines of output
. CP/M: 2 concurrent processes
MS-DOS: 4 concurrent processes
. Memory limitations dictate a fixed maximum number of
procedures which can be executed concurrently at any
one time. This number is operating system dependent.
- CP/M : Limit of 2 concurrent processes
- MS-DOS: Current limit of 4 concurrent processes.
Presumably, this could be increased if
necessary.

Some of the above limits may be changed in the constant
declaration area of the source code.

There may be a limit on the number of lines in a source
program (I'm not sure).

Pre-declared functions :

RANDOM(I) : returns a random INTEGER X such that 0 <= X <= I



III. Operating the Compiler
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Command line syntax is : FNAME /X*

where FNAME is a legal file name with the .TYP optional
and the option is one of the following :

C :: compile the source code to P-code
E :: execute a previously compiled P-code
D :: compile and then execute

* is an optional flag to display debug information