macOS pascal in XCode

[satans_banjo]

hi. i'm doing an A-level course in computing and for that i need to use one of computing's oldest, most obsolete programming language known to man - pascal. after several hours of searching for and installing a pascal compiler and a pascal XCode plugin, i thought all i needed to do was open up XCode and start pascal coding

i was wrong. i can still build pascal programs, but i can only do that by opening a new 'project' - something i am fairly new to considering i use interpreted languages most of the time (python) and use textwrangler to write them. after starting a new project, a folder with about 3 files and 2 sub-folders is created, even if i'm only planning on making a simple "hello, world" script. is this all really necessary? or will i find it useful once i get around to making more complicated stuff?

also, my school uses windows and therefore i have to comply with their windows-using test machines in order to get my coursework marks. is there anything i would need to add to a script to make it work on windows?

 

[HiRez]

Generally it is necessary for Xcode to create a folder hierarchy for projects. The build process that goes on can be very complex. However, you could probably use TextWrangler and compile using Terminal if you really want to, though as you guess, having all your files in "project" form might be easier once your projects get larger. Are you using the GNU Pascal compiler? Check this page for information. I think you would also need the Xcode Integration Kit.

It's odd you're really using Pascal for a class, I thought it was dead. It was a good language for intermediate computing and learning back in the day, but I thought Java had pretty much replaced it in those roles. You will probably not be able to run on Windows a compiled Pascal app that you made on the Mac, since it has no platform-neutral bytecode stage like Java. I imagine most source code would work fine on either platform, but I think you'd have to compile it separately on each platform you want to run it on.

 

[Mord]

what cource do you take? i refused to take ICT as it's plain stupid so i just took CCNA (cisco) and electronics so i learn scripting in cisco and assembly in electronics (which is icky)

 

[satans_banjo]

thanks for the reply

i'm using Free Pascal and i've got the XCode integration kit. the only problem with using the terminal to compile all my scripts is because i'm really at a learning stage right now so i'll really need the quick 'compile & run' to test out a lot of the syntaxes i'm learning. once i've got past the learning stage i'll probably use the terminal to compile it to keep things simple, but for now i guess i'll get to grips with the XCode project system

thanks for the expertise

what cource do you take? i refused to take ICT as it's plain stupid so i just took CCNA (cisco) and electronics so i learn scripting in cisco and assembly in electronics (which is icky)

i'm taking AS level computing, i think i'm on the AQA board. i don't think pascal is a specific requirement for the course (we just need to provide a coded solution to a problem), but that's the one they teach in school so i guess i'm stuck