Free Pascal is a powerful and open source compiler, that represents a free alternative to commercial products, Turbo Pascal and Delphi. Its interface is very similar to Borland Turbo Pascal, but with more options. Free Pascal emerged when Borland made the announcement that there wouldn't be a Borland Pascal 8 version, and the next version would be a product only for Windows (which later turned into Delphi). One student, Paul Florian Klämpfl, began to work on his own compiler. The compiler was written in the Borland Turbo Pascal language and produced 32-bit code.
The Free Pascal language syntax is almost completely compatible with Turbo Pascal 7.0 and with many versions of Delphi too (classes, rtti, exceptions, ansistrings, widestrings, interfaces), but it also enhances these languages like operator overloading. Free Pascal is excellent not only for learning programming, but also for high tech programming. You can easily mix assembler code and Pascal code in the language you wish.
If you were thinking that Pascal language was only a memory from the past, now with Free Pascal, this language is not only alive, but more powerful than ever.
Comments