I am trying to convert a huge amount of code written in MetaWare Professional Pascal to Free Pascal. Unfortunately, the MetaWare code makes fairly extensive use of Pascal conformant arrays.

Free Pascal's open arrays are similar, but modifying all of the uses of conformant arrays would be a fairly big job.

Any advice for us?

-- Bruce
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail is confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this email in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If you received this e-mail in error, please delete it from your computer and contact the sender.

Can you give us some more info on conformant arrays ? It's the first time I heard of such a construct.

Michael.

Michael Van Canneyt wrote

Can you give us some more info on conformant arrays ? It's the first time I heard of such a construct.

http://docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/doc3k/B3150290023.10194/53

Jonas

Hmmm.
Does not sound like something easily supported :(

Michael.

Can you give us some more info on conformant arrays ? It's the first time I heard of such a construct.

AFAIK it's stated in ISO 7185 document. Haven't you read it?

A conformant array is a formal parameter array whose bounds will conform to those of an actual parameter array. (The element types of both must be the same.)

An
http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.gnu-pascal.de/demos/conformantdemo.pas Example from GPC site.

In the book

A Model Implementation of Standard Pascal

by
Jim Welsh and
Atholl Hay

PRENTICE/HALL INTERNATIONAL
ISBN : 0-13-586454-2
1986

the Conformant Arrays are implemented .
( page 92 : 9.10 Conformant array handling )

( Standard Pascal means a Pascal defined by Standards BS 6192 and ISO 7185 . )

In its Foreword it is written

´Firstly it places in the public domain a complete implementation of the International Standard for the PASCAL programming language . ´ ( p. vii )

I think , in a Pascal compiler
ability to define an array like the following

Procedure X
       (
       m : Integer ;
       n : Integer ;
       p : Integer ;
       q : Integer ;
   Var a : Array [ m .. n , p .. q ] of Real ;
       ...
       ) ;

will make it very usable in scientific computations like Fortran having run time Dimension statement .

Here , the most important part is to use m , n , p , q as VARIABLES taking values at run time .

At present , when m , n , p , q are constants , the following statement is compiled :

Const  m = 1 ;
Const  n = 20 ;
Const  p = 0  ;
Const  q = 45 ;

Procedure X
(

   Var a : Array [ m .. n , p .. q ] of Real ;
       ...
       ) ;

A similar part will be inserted into compiled code to be used in run time .

Thank you very much

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk