VSI Pascal for OpenVMS Reference Manual

The VSI Pascal compiler accepts programs that comply with two standards and a subset of programs that comply with a third. VSI Pascal also provides features (called extensions) that are not part of any standard. For portable code, limit your use of these extensions or isolate the extensions in separate modules.

Unextended Pascal Standards

The unextended Pascal standards are as follows:

• American National Standard ANSI/IEEE770X3.97-1989 (ANSI)
• International Standard ISO 7185-1989 (ISO)

VSI Pascal accepts programs that comply to either standard. In the VSI Pascal documentation set, the term “unextended Pascal” applies to both the ANSI and ISO standards.

VSI Pascal contains FIPS-109 (Federal Information Processing Standard) validation support.

The standards are divided into two levels of standardization: Level 0 and Level 1. An example of a technical difference between the Level 0 standard and the Level 1 standard is that Level 0 does not include conformant arrays, while Level 1 does.

VSI Pascal has passed the validation suite for Pascal compilers. It received a CLASS A certificate for both levels of the ISO standard as well as the ANSI standard. CLASS A certificates are given to compilers with a fully conforming implementation.