VAX-11 PASCAL Primer (Ver 2.0)

This document, the "VAX-11 PASCAL Primer" (October 1982), is a tutorial guide designed for programmers who are new to the VAX-11 PASCAL language. It assumes some prior experience with high-level programming, but not necessarily PASCAL itself, and recommends familiarity with the VAX/VMS operating system.

The primer introduces a subset of the VAX-11 PASCAL language, aiming to provide sufficient information for users to begin writing programs. Key topics covered include:

• Program Development: Steps for creating, compiling, linking, and executing PASCAL programs on the VAX/VMS system.
• PASCAL Program Structure: Explanation of program headings, declaration sections (for types, constants, variables, procedures, and functions), and executable sections.
• Data Concepts: Introduction to predefined scalar types (INTEGER, REAL, BOOLEAN, CHAR), variables, and expressions, along with user-defined scalar types (enumerated and subrange).
• Fundamental Statements: Coverage of assignment, compound, conditional (IF-THEN, IF-THEN-ELSE, CASE), and repetitive (FOR, REPEAT, WHILE) control statements.
• Input/Output: Detailed explanation of READ, READLN, WRITE, and WRITELN procedures for terminal I/O, and the EOLN and EOF functions.
• Structured Types: Introduction to arrays (including multidimensional) and records.
• Procedures and Functions: How to declare, call, and pass parameters to routines.

The document also highlights specific VAX-11 PASCAL extensions, such as an exponentiation operator, support for double and quadruple precision real data types, extended identifier characters ($ and _), the OTHERWISE clause in CASE statements, character-string and enumerated-type parameters for I/O procedures, variable initialization, and expressions in the CONST section. For more advanced features and comprehensive reference information, it directs readers to the "VAX-11 PASCAL Language Reference Manual."