Re: Alternatives to C: ObjectPascal, Eiffel, Ada or Modula-3?

[Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com>]

On Mar 23, 1:27 pm, "John B. Matthews" <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
> In article
> <7a0c7a19-5d83-4cc6-be68-95ebf4153...@t23g2000yqt.googlegroups.com>,
>
>  cbcurl <cbc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > since when was Pascal ever an interpreted language
>
> AFAIK, ca. 1977, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCSD_Pascal>.

I wouldn't call it an interpreted language, really.  The UCSD compiler
generated code for a machine that didn't exist, and then programs ran
by interpreting that machine's instructions.  However, my recollection
is that the pseudo-machine's instruction set really didn't have
anything to do with Pascal and could have been used for any language.
A few years later, Western Digital developed a machine that executed
the P-machine's instructions directly (in microcode).  The lab I
worked for back in college (at UC Irvine) used this compiler, and we
had one of the WD machines also, so this is something I'm quite
familiar with, as far as the deteriorating brain cells of my memory
permit.

This doesn't meet my criteria for what I'd call an interpreted
language.  For that, I'd assume that the interpreter reads the
original source statements, or some sort of tokenized form that bears
a close relation to the original source statements, while running the
program.  I'd also assume that variables and other identifiers are
stored by name, or by something equivalent such as a pointer into a
string table, but that in any case the interpreter does things "by
name".  In contrast, I believe that UCSD Pascal allocated local stack
variables pretty much the same way a native compiler would,
referencing them via byte or word offsets from the top or bottom of a
stack frame, although it's been a really long time so I could be wrong
here.

                                     -- Adam