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Title: Begin

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1+The [[Reserved word|reserved word]] `begin` marks the start of the definition of the executable portion of a [[Block|block]]. In conjunction with [[End|end]] it is also used to group [[statement|statements]] into a so-called “compound statement”.
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3+> **Note:** In [[Pascal]] a compound statement does not create a new scope. Only blocks do.
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5+In [[Extended Pascal|extended Pascal]] `to begin do …` starts the definition of the [[Initialization|initialization part of a module]].
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7+While every `begin` must have a corresponding `end`, not all occurrences of `end` have a corresponding `begin`.
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9+## syntax justification
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11+Lots of programming languages use a pair of single characters to indicate boundaries. Typing out the words `begin` and `end` is indeed more cumbersome than writing `{ }`. However, the meaning of such characters is not as obvious as words are.
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13+## matching
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15+- The source editor of the [[Lazarus IDE]] supports a “find matching begin/end” function.
16+- [[vim]] can be configured to support matching Pascal’s `begin`/`end`, too.
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18+---
19+*From the Free Pascal wiki, page "Begin", as it stood on 2021-08-21 after a change by Kai Burghardt, out of the wiki's dump of 2024-05-26. Copyright stays with the author who wrote it, according to the old wiki's [[Licensing]] page. If you have concerns about this material, [message the admin](/wiki-contact).*

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