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CSCI 5106: Programming Languages
Spring 2006, University of Minnesota
Using Pascal

To use the Pascal on our local cluster, you have to load the module soft/egcs/gpc. If you are new to the UMN setup and don't know about modules and how to load them, you can find some information about this in the system help pages; with specific regard to modules, you may look here.

Once you have loaded the module mentioned above, you can invoke the Pascal compiler by typing gpc.

To illustrate the use of this compiler, let us consider the following Pascal program that computes the sum of integers from 1 to 10: 

program sum;

{This program computes the  sum of integers from 1 to 10.}

const n	=  10;
var i, ssum : integer;

begin
   ssum := 0;
   i := n;
   while (i > 0) do
    begin
      ssum := ssum + i;
      i := i - 1;
    end;
   writeln(' The sum of integers from 1 to 10 is: ', ssum:5);
end.
Assume that this program is saved in a file with name sum.p. You can then compile this program using the following command: 
% gpc sum.p
(The % symbol is the system prompt.) The compiler will then process the file sum.p, providing you with information as it goes along, some of which might be diagnostic in nature. If compilation is successful, as it should be in this case, an executable version will have been created in the file a.out. You can run this as follows: 
% a.out
  The sum of integers from 1 to 10 is:   55
%
Sometimes you may want to produce an executable in a file with a more descriptive name than a.out. You can force this by using the option -o with pc. For instance, the command 
% gpc -o sum.out sum.p
will put the executable in the file sum.out instead of in a.out. There are some restrictions on the suffix or extension that can be used in file names that I do not understand completely. Look at the man page to find out about these, The compiler also has other switches that you can find out about from the man page.

Created by gopalan@cs.umn.edu. Last updated on January 8, 2006 by xqi@cs.umn.edu