At 09:03 PM 7/25/2002, James wrote:
I'm trying to teach myself pascal. Anyone know of any used book stores that have a decent computer section? I tried Another Story on Stafford St., but he didn't have anything for pascal.
I dug around to find the name of the book store near Webster square that I like. It turns out to be "Another Story" at 1145 Main St. Stafford is around the corner, so I guess that's what you meant. There are several other used book stores in town (check the phone book), but most of them have pitiful computer sections. The people who run book stores seem to be totally unqualified to distinguish timeless classics of CS from obsolete manufacturer's litter-ature.
From: "Stephen C. Daukas" <stephen@daukas.com>
The question is, why Pascal?
No, that was not the question. Since he asked about Pascal, I will refrain from raving on about how he should learn Algol68 and Haskell and numerical analysis and Russian (though of course he should).
Delphi does C++ too... In any event, the book for Pascal is by Nicholas Wirth (the creator of the language). It is a small black covered book that looks more like a journal than a text. If memory serves, it is called something like "Data Structures and Algorithms using Pascal." I taught from this book some 18 years ago at BU... I liken it to K&R on C and C++ - dense, but very useful.
You may be conflating: Jensen, K. and Wirth, N. "PASCAL User Manual and Report", Springer-Verlag (1975), the main reference definition of the language, which has been published under several covers, but usually some variant of the typical Springer silver grey, with "Algorithm + Data Structures = Programs" by Wirth alone, which is an typical undergraduate data structures textbook using Pascal (or something like it) for the examples. This book would not be much use for learning Pascal. The User Manual and Report should be required reading for anyone who is at all serious about Pascal. It is indeed like the Kernighan and Ritchie book called "The C Programming Language", in that it is the definitive description of the basic language before a dozen people and corporations embraced and extended it. I don't think K&R ever wrote anything about C++, that is Stroustrup's baby (or bastard). -- Keith