Pastel is an extended version of the
Pascal
Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name
* Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name
** Blaise Pascal, Frenc ...
programming language, created in c. 1982 for ''Amber'', an operating system for the S-1
supercomputer project at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...
in
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...
. The Pastel compiler was the inspiration for
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to u ...
's
GNU C compiler
The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is an optimizing compiler produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages, hardware architectures and operating systems. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) distributes GCC as free softwar ...
.
Pastel was conceived by Jeffrey M. Broughton, then Project Engineer in charge of compilers and operating system software for the S-1 project, because of dissatisfaction with the
PL/1
PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. It ...
language in which Amber was being implemented. The language was named Pastel ("an off-color Pascal").
Compared with Pascal compilers of that period, Pastel's features included:
[
Chapter: S-l Software Development: Programming Languages Supported]
*Improved type definition
*Parametric types
*Explicit packing and allocation control
*Additional parameter passing modes
*Additional control constructs
*Set iteration
*Loop-exit form
*Return statement
*Module definition
*Exception handling
*General enhancements
*Conditional boolean operations
*Constant expressions
*Variable initialization
References
{{reflist
1982 software
Pascal (programming language) compilers