JRT PASCAL TECHNICAL NEWSLETTER  3.0 - 1               APRIL 11, 1983



      1. EXTERNAL PROCEDURE DECLARATIONS

           One  of  the  most  common  programming errors reported to us is
      declaring external procedures in  the  wrong  order  within  external
      procedure  modules.   In  the  Pascal  source  program of an external
      procedure which calls other external procedures, the procedure header
      of the called procedures always comes AFTER the header of the current
      procedure.  That is - only global const, type  and  var  declarations
      can come between the word extern and the procedure header.
              EXTERN
              { optional global CONST, TYPE, VAR declarations }
              PROCEDURE THISPROC ( X,Y : INTERGER );
              VAR
              N, M : INTEGER;         { variables local to THISPROC }

              PROCEDURE EXPROC1; EXTERN
              PROCEDURE EXPROC2 ( A : REAL ); EXTERN;
              FUNCTION EXFUN1 ( X : REAL ): REAL; EXTERN;

              BEGIN
              { THISPROC Pascal code }
              END; .

           The  external  procedure  example  on  the  reference card is in
      error.


      2. FILES OF RECORD LENGTH GREATER THAN 128

           The procedures GET, PUT and window variables should not be  used
      with  files  whose  record  length  (declared  in the FILE OF ...) is
      greater than 128 bytes.

           Random files with records of any length are allowed.  READ/WRITE
      may be used to sequentially input/output  records  greater  than  128
      bytes if one of the following is done:
              A. if the file's record size exceeds 128 then it should be
                 declared as FILE OF CHAR.
              B. install this patch using CP/M's DDT utility program:

                      A>DDT EXEC.COM
                      DDT VERS 1.4
                      NEXT  PC  END
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                      TECHNICAL NEWSLETTER 3.0 - 1  Page 1

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