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1 Programming

1. Pascal

Yes, I program nearly exclusively in Pascal. I think it is much cleaner, less error prone, and modern dialects don't have any significant downsides to comparable languages likes C (or C++), while still being truely multi-purpose and cleaner.

I do like the templates principle of C++ though. Maybe a cleaned up version can be created for a Pascal too someday. The rest of differences are not really interesting IMHO.

1.1 Free Pascal

Yes, I do some serious programming once in a while. I'm currently mostly busy as coremember for FreePascal.

Free Pascal is a 32-bit Pascal compiler for most x86 operating systems (=PCs), and several m68k (Motorola 68000 range) targets. The compiler supports both the Turbo Pascal dialect, as the more modern Object Pascal dialect used by Delphi, though it doesn't support all of its libraries.

Most of my Free Pascal work goes directly into the project, and is in CVS.

Some other projects are less fit for inclusion, not ready, or something I just made to scratch an itch.

1.1.1 XTDFPC

XtdFPC is simply a barrel with small utility units and demoes that I use myself. At the moment it is probably not compilable with current versions of FPC (XTDFPC is still at the level of 0.99.10), but I hope to remedy that soon, and update it properly to 1.0.x level.

Since, for a while, I used some units from Thomas Schatzl in my own programs and units, and he kindly allowed me to distribute them with mine.

However, since I stopped updating. the units in my package are much older than the ones he currently publishes. See Last known webpage Thomas Schatzl

XTDFPC Downloads:

If you have working routines that should be in this archive, mail them to me (e-mail below). Except for routines, I can also use clear examples which demonstrate more advanced features of FPC programming.

1.1.1.1 xtdlib (Modula-2)

I stopped all development for the (TopSpeed) Modula-2 archive years ago already, and removed the libraries from my webpage because of the space. Jeff Stoner's site that mirrored seems to have also disappeared. My quota increased, and maybe I can find it somewhere in my pile with ancient archives.

1.1.2 Symbolic, an expression parser and evaluator

Symbolic is a kind of recursive descent expression parser that generates parsetrees. The parsetree object can then get manipulated. (Taylor Polynomal generation and differentation included).

Finally there is a VM based evaluator which can do repeated high speed evaluations of an expression. Some small demoes are also included.

Thanks to Trai Tran (parser principles copied from one of his SWAG posts).

This is the first publically released version, so it doesn't have a version number, but I'll refer to it as 0.1 later.

Symbolic is written for Free Pascal's Delphi compability mode, and should either run directly on Delphi, or with minor modifications.

Download: Download Symbolic

To Do file and pre-docs

1.1.3 conffiles, a configuration file reader

Conffiles is one of my older experiments with parsing. While Symbolic is a parser with a reasonably standard principle and architecture, Conffiles is somewhat adhoc set of classes that can be used to parse a lot of different kinds of configuration files to trees that can be queried using properties, and often written back to file.

Build in support for INI files with nested sections, Golded files. Some examples show how to parse e.g. /etc/xf86Config, and I advise people to have a look at the source and the examples to get an idea of the possibilities.

1.2 Pascal, generic



Marco van de Voort
2001-10-29