Re: Turbo Pascal 1.0 trivia

laurie boshell wrote:


> > Arne Frick <africk@ilk.de> wrote
> >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. As far as I remember, it was the first native-code
> > compiler for Pascal at the time.
>
> Turbo pascal 1.0 was a native code compiler. It was based on a European
> pascal compiler called 'Compas Pascal'. UCSD pascal (and for that matter
> UCSD fortran and UCSD basic) were all p-code compilers. Versions I.5 to
> II.1 were great but they lost it from version IV.0 and later. (III.0 and
> III.1 were p-codes executed by hardware on the WD micro-engine, I've got 2
> such beasts here).


The story of Turbo starts with the Dane Anders Hejlsberg writing a
small Pascal compiler for the Z80-based Nascom-2 computer running its
native "OS" (a 2k machine-code monitor in ROM). It had an editor,
compiler and run-time in 12k (!) and was called BLS Pascal, BLS being
Blue Label Software. Back then, however, I preferred a British
compiler called HiSoft Pascal which had a tad more features.


BLS Pascal then went on to become Compas Pascal for CP/M-80, and
evolved there for a while. Around the time of version 3.3 (if I
remember correctly) Philippe Kahn approached Anders and asked him if
he could rewrite the compiler for the 8088-family. So that's what he
did, in a few weeks. (Anders has always been brilliant.) And, while
they were at it, they also released the CP/M version of Turbo.


I really loved that stuff. Too bad I now find myself writing C++ under
Windows...


Martin.
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