Re: Turbo Pascal 1.0 trivia

Arne Frick <africk@ilk.de> wrote:


> I am interested in the answer to the following question and couldn't
> find anything on the net.
>
> Remember the original Turbo Pascal for CP/M compiler from Borland? A
> colleague claims it was based on p-code, but my memory tells me
> otherwise.


Your memory tells you right. Turbo Pascal 1.0 did generate machine code.
It didn't optimize the code at all, but unoptimized machine code still
runs much faster than interpreted p-code.


> As far as I remember, it was the first native-code compiler for
> Pascal at the time.


It wasn't -- Pascal MT/+ for instance, which pre-dated Turbo Pascal,
did also generate machine code.


However, Turbo Pascal 1.0 was the first Pascal compiler with an
integrated development environment for CP/M. It was also amazingly
compact - compiler, edutor and runtime library all fit in 28K,
while other compilers typically needed twice as much for the compiler
alone.


Turbo Pascal did simplify things a little bit -- there was no link
step, instead TP generated absolute machine code. The entire run-time
library (some 11-12 K) was always included in the runtime, always at
the same memory addresses.


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