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SL viewers not written in C++?

Talarus Luan
Ancient Archaean Dragon
Join date: 18 Mar 2006
Posts: 4,831
12-31-2008 04:10
From: Argent Stonecutter
Modula 3 is quite portable, too. It's cross-platform portability that counts.

Can you write a non-trivial program in Delphi and have it run in FreePascal without modification? I've had C programs I wrote 25 years ago... on MS-DOS and AmigaDOS, 16-bit... compile and run unmodified 20 years later... on Tru64 UNIX on Alpha with DEC's compiler, and on Solaris with Sun's, and on OS X with GCC.


I suppose it depends on the exact meaning you're going to use for the term "non-trivial", but being fair and not using platform-specific capabilities/libraries/functions as a litmus (which even C/C++/Modula-3 will have problems with), yes, I can.

I have several programs written which compile on both Windows and Linux platforms that I would consider are "non-trivial" (a full DynDNS implementation, with protocol support for modification as well as a database), and I have older TurboPascal applications I wrote in the early 80s that will compile and run on FreePascal without modification, though they will sometimes require a platform-specific library (text screen handling and audio, mainly) to do so.

Delphi/Kylix only supports x86 code generation on Windows and Linux, but FreePascal is Delphi-compatible, and compiles to a wide array of platforms.

As such, I think it passes that litmus, at least for everything I have need to do with it. :)
Nina Stepford
was lied to by LL
Join date: 26 Mar 2007
Posts: 3,373
12-31-2008 04:46
this is without doubt the geekiest thread to ever exist in resident answers :)
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Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid
Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 20,263
12-31-2008 05:04
From: Talarus Luan
I have older TurboPascal applications I wrote in the early 80s that will compile and run on FreePascal without modification, though they will sometimes require a platform-specific library (text screen handling and audio, mainly) to do so.
Either you're defining things like "opening and reading files" as "platform specific", or FreePascal has to have a Turbo Pascal compatibility mode. Turbo Pascal was never compatible with any real Pascal that did anything more than read/readln and write/writeln to an already-opened file. Turbo Pascal was its own language, with its own I/O, its own linking/library model, and everything.
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