Definition: Pascal

A high-level programming language developed by Swiss professor Niklaus Wirth in the early 1970s and named after the French mathematician, Blaise Pascal. It is noted for its structured programming, which caused it to achieve popularity initially in academic circles. Pascal has had strong influence on subsequent languages, such as Ada, dBASE and PAL. See Turbo Pascal.

Pascal is available in both interpreter and compiler form and has unique ways of defining variables. For example, a set of values can be stated for a variable, and if any other value is stored in it, the program generates an error at runtime. A Pascal set is an array-like structure that can hold a varying number of predefined values. Sets can be matched and manipulated providing powerful non-numeric programming capabilities.

The following Turbo Pascal example converts Fahrenheit to Celsius:

   program convert;
   var
   fahr, cent : real;
   begin
    write('Enter Fahrenheit ');
    readln(fahr);
    cent := (fahr - 32) * 5 / 9;
    writeln('Celsius is ',cent)
   end.