Pascal User Manual and Report

For nearly a decade Pascal User Manual and Report has served as the standard tutorial and reference book for practicing programmers who wanted to learn and use Pascal. During the 1970's the popularity of Pascal grew beyond anyone's expectations and has become one of the most important computer programming languages used throughout the world. At that time in the United States, commercial use of Pascal often exceeded academic interest. Today most universities use Pascal to teach programming. Pascal is the modern alternative to PUI or Algol 60, and even Fortran is changing to take advantage of Pascal's innovations. In our work with Pascal User's Group and Pascal News, we witnessed the spread of Pascal implementations to every modern computer system. In 1971 one computer system had a Pascal compiler. By 1974 the number had grown to 10 and in 1979 there were more than 80. Pascal is always available on those ubiquitous breeds of computer systems: personal computers and professional workstations. Questions arising out of the Southampton Symposium on Pascal in 1977 [Reference 10] began the first organized effort to write an officially sanctioned, international Pascal Standard. Participants sought to consolidate the list of questions that naturally arose when people tried to implement Pascal compilers using definitions found in the Pascal User Manual and Report. That effort culminated in the ISO 7185 Pascal Standard [Reference 11] which officially defines Pascal and necessitated the revision of this book.